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No-Knot Fas-Snaps and Norman Lures Speed Clips (Guest Review)
by Jonathan Reynolds

Call me lazy, but I HATE to retie once I start fishing. I've been known to stubbornly pitch a bait that isn't producing simply because the act of tying a knot seems like such a waste of good fishing time. If I'm out on a big boat, this isn't such a big deal, since I can always have a two or three rods handy with different sorts of baits. But, like most of us, when wading I rarely carry more than a single rod. Further, a switch to Power-Pro this past season made retying both less necessary and even more annoying (no more chomping through the line to speed things up). Proving that I have some standards, however, I wasn't willing to go back to the snap-swivels of my youth. Those were too big and had a tendency to fail when big fish were on the line.

While surfing various catalogue web sites this past year I came across a possible solution. Two brands of "snaps" were available that seemed the answers to my prayers - the "No-Knot Fas-Snap" and the "Norman Lures Speed Clip." Both promised (of course) trouble-free use and rapid lure changing. I whipped out the old credit card and immediately ordered a set of Fas-Snaps (medium size) and some Speed-Clips - both available for small change at Cabelas.

The No-Knots are basically a pinched hook-shaped loop of spring steel that you pop right through the eye of whatever you are fishing. They run small, too. The "medium" size are barely a quarter inch long. The Norman Speed Clips are a good deal bigger and more complex - rather like a split-ring with a bit of loop extended out to tie onto. Since new gear is always a great excuse for fishing, I was out the door at the first opportunity.

Sadly, the first day out was something of a disappointment. I tried the "No-Knots" first and quickly found two key problems. First, the small size of the clip meant that if you were using it on anything with a thick eyelet (such as a 2/0 hook for a Texas-rigged tube), then the clip would be deformed. Now, you could whip out the plyers and snug it down, but that was about as much trouble as retying in the first place. Worse, the No-Knots had an ugly tendency to let go of buzz baits when you cut loose with a power-cast. Splitshot and Brian King got to watch me donate a couple of buzz-baits to the river gods this way during my second day out with the No-Knots. I got pretty good at tracking the buzzbaits down (these were Buckeye buzzers, and nobody wants to loose one of those without a fight), but time spent finding a bait in the shallows isn't time spent fishing, so I promptly gave the Speed Clips a try. Sadly, the Normans were flawed in the opposite direction. While safe from any tendency to let go of baits, were too bulky to get through the eyes of small jig heads or similar smallish baits. Indeed, they won't even go through the eyes of many worm hooks - thus they are only suitable to spinnerbaits and crankbaits.

Was the whole process a bust? Not at all. I decided to give the Fas-Snap "large" model a try before I gave up. Still mighty darn small, these clips were capable of passing through bigger hook eyes without deforming. I shifted the "medium" clips to fly-fishing duties (they work dandy even with poppers, thanks to their small size). I have been using the large size with minimal problems ever since. I can now change baits in about five seconds. Not surprisingly, the new ease in bait-swapping translates into more fish, since I can much more easily experiment until I find what the fish are in the mood for. Sadly, the occasional spinnerbait or buzzbait still gets hurled into oblivion. But, I'm willing to trade the loss of baits against the time gained fishing. Notably, I have yet to loose a fish to a failed snap. Quite to the contrary, occasionally they hook the fish rather than the hook to which they are attached. The first time this happened I thought it was a fluke, but since then I've "hooked" a couple of dozen fish on these tiny metal snaps - go figure!

The large size No-Knot Fas-Snaps have now become a standard part of my fishing kit.

See both at Cabela's