Fishing off high piers always causes problems when
trying to safely release fish.To this end,I've come up with this automatically opening sling.The ida is that you unhook your
fish,place it in the sling and lower it into the water where the sling opens and safely lets the fish away.
Fo this you'll need a piece of waterproof cloth around 18" by 30",a strip
of hardwood around 20" by 1/2 ". In this instance I'm using a louvre from an old louvre door,cut longwise through the middle.A
piece of metal or lead filled copper pipe around 20",a couple of split rings and some string or corelene.And maybe most difficult
to get hold of,a piece of polystyrene roughly 18" by 2" by 1 1/2".Cavity wall insulation boards are ideal for this.
Firstly cut a groove in your polystyrene to fit your wood as in the first
diagram.Glue overnight with PVA.
Now the tricky bit.Get a very understanding wife to hem the polystyrene,and
the metal into opposite ends of your cloth,as in the second picture,leaving approx 3/4 " sticking out each end for tying to
later.
Next rig your sling.
Tie a piece of string on each end of your sling to act as handles.While
doing this,tie a split ring on each one so as it's in the middle of each handle.
Tie the mainline to the split ring on METAL handle end of the sling,passing
it FIRST through the POLYSTYRENE end split ring.This will allow the metal end to sink in the water while the polystyrene end
floats.
In this diagram,the blue elipse represents a fish.At this point your sling
is in the water up to the handles.
As the metal end sinks,allowing the mainline to go through the polystyrene
end split ring,the sling unfurls,releasing the fish.
This is a useful item for two reasons.For one,it obviously stops the splat
factor of the fish hitting the water,which may not kill it but stuns it long enough for a gull to nab it,and two the fish
can come to itself while being protected from gulls by the sling being there in the way.
