Hoopnet Mending

[ful-rac]

2 weeks ago I accidentally caught a hoopnet while fishing for halibut. The net was pretty fouled with growth, it looked like it had been down there for awhile, I decided to save it. Iv'e been wanting to learn how to fix my own hoops for years now, ever since I started hooping and got my first hole in the net probably from a shark or eel...

So I cleaned the sucker up and washed and scraped off most of the gunk that had grown on it. I found that, from just sitting in the sand some of the netting had just worn down and was getting ready to go. Just from pulling on the netting with my fingers it was enough to rip in several different spots.

Curious as to if I could learn how to mend a net easily...I acquired a net needle or also known as a shuttle, did a little bit of online research and found the repairing process is pretty simple, there really is nothing to it. So with a needle and some twine you could easily repair all your hoops practically forever. So while I was trying to figure out the correct size of the seine twine I needed to effect a good repair. I decided to practice on the recovered hoopnet, which had a pretty significant hole at this point. Got some home depot mason twine and used that for practice while I waited on the seine twine from amazon.




So after having given it a practice run, I was ready to do it with the seine twine. So after waiting on the mailman for a few days...I finally get to put it to use. I think it came out pretty good?

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So the following week I asked around if anybody had a ripped net I could repair...and there sure was...Andy had a net with a hole in it big enough to stick your whole arm through. So I offered to fix the holes for him for fun...and he was happy to let me fix them for him...I noticed that he already had a other holes that were zip tied closed, and some other spots where he tried to close holes with spectra. I fixed'm all up...




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