Guide
Stop Your Squid Jig Snagging the Bottom — The Rui Anti-Snag Mod
Squid jig snagging weed and reef? Remove the down-facing hooks one by one so you do not stress the glued crown-to-body joint. The Rui Anti-Snag Mod, step-by-step + video.
If you fish piers, weed beds and reef edges around Port Phillip and Western Port, you know the feeling: a perfect cast, a slow sink… and your jig buries into the weed or wedges on rock before a squid ever sees it. You lose jigs, you lose time, you lose fish.
The culprit is the ring of spikes at the tail — the crown. The spikes on its underside point straight down and grab the bottom on every drop. The fix is to remove just those. But how you remove them matters, and that is the part nobody talks about.
Why squid jigs snag in the first place
A squid jig’s crown is a ring, or double ring, of fine barbless spikes at the tail. Those spikes are there to catch a squid grabbing from behind.
The spikes on the belly side, though, point down. On the sink and the bottom pause, they hook weed, sand and rock instead of squid. With a heavy nose-down keel, those bottom spikes are basically a grappling hook for the seabed.
That is why this mod is useful on snaggy water, especially when you are trying to keep a jig close to weed edges or broken reef instead of floating miles above the strike zone.
The mod nobody tells you about — and the right way to do it
Removing the down-facing spikes is the easy idea. The clever part is removing them one by one without stressing the glued crown joint.
If you simply bite through a hardened crown spike with side cutters, you need a fair bit of force. That force can travel into the base of the tail hook crown — the glued connection where the crown meets the jig body. Do that badly and you can loosen the whole crown and ruin the jig.
Instead, fatigue the metal one spike at a time. Slip the hook-bender tube from a 3-in-1 eging tool over a single down-facing spike and rock it back and forth a dozen times. That spike work-hardens and breaks off cleanly, while the force stays in the individual hook rather than the glued crown-to-body joint.
Same result, far less risk to the jig.
What you need
- Your squid jig, shown here on a size 3.5 RUI
- A hook bender — the small tube on a 3-in-1 eging tool
- Any rigid tube that slips over a hook, if you do not have the exact eging tool
- Under a minute
Step by step
- Hold the jig in fishing position — body level, keel down — so you can see which spikes point downward on the belly side of the crown.
- Slip the hook-bender tube over a belly-side spike, right down near its base. Do this to the spikes that point down toward the belly, about 4-5 of them, and leave the top and side prongs alone.
- Rock it back and forth — bend one way, then the other, a dozen or so times — until the metal fatigues and that single spike breaks off.
- Repeat for each down-facing spike while keeping the tube movement controlled. The point is to remove them individually, not twist or load the whole glued crown assembly.
- Check it. Hang the jig by the line tie: no spike should point straight down, the crown-to-body joint should still feel firm, and the top hooks should be untouched.
Honest trade-off
You do give up the down-facing hooks, so you may drop the occasional squid that grabs from directly underneath. On clean sand it is not worth it. On snaggy weed and reef, far fewer lost jigs and more time fishing easily wins. Most anglers keep one modded jig for dirty ground and a standard one for clean ground.
Before vs after
Before: downward spikes dig into weed and reef on every drop, creating constant snags and lost jigs.
After the Rui Anti-Snag Mod: nothing points down, so the jig rides over the bottom edge where calamari actually sit. You spend more time in the strike zone and less time pulling weed off the crown.
When this mod helps most
- Weedy ground — Blairgowrie, Rye and Portsea seagrass flats
- Reef and rock edges where jigs wedge between rocks
- Shallow pier work on a low or slack tide when you are fishing close to the bottom
- Learning sessions where losing another jig would end the confidence before the squid arrive
If you are still learning depth control, pair this with the squid jig sinking rate guide and the how to work a squid jig lesson. If you are choosing the jig to modify, start with the best squid jig Australia guide, then check the squid jig size guide and squid jig colour guide.
Squid jig anti-snag FAQ
Why not just bite through the bottom hooks with side cutters?
You are still removing the down-facing hooks. The risk is not the idea of removal; the risk is using a hard side-cutter bite that sends force through the glued joint where the tail hook crown meets the jig body.
Working each spike back and forth with a hook-bender tube removes them one by one, so the stress stays in the single spike instead of loosening the crown from the body.
What tool do I use?
Use the hook bender on a 3-in-1 eging tool — the little tube. Any rigid tube that slips over the spike can do the same job.
Won’t removing hooks cost me squid?
You only remove the down-facing spikes. Squid grab the body and get caught on the top and side hooks you keep, so most hook-ups are unaffected.
You may lose the odd squid that grabs from directly below. That is a fair trade on ground where you would otherwise lose the whole jig.
What size and colour jig should I start with in Australia?
The jig in the video is a size 3.5 — a great all-rounder for deeper edges and breeze. For most land-based eging, start around 3.0 and go up to 3.5 in wind or current.
See our squid jig colour guide and squid jig size guide for the broader system.
Found this useful?
Feel free to share this mod with your fishing mates or repost the video — all we ask is a link back to this page so other Aussie squidders can find the full steps.
<p>Source: <a href="https://www.squidfishing.com.au/guides/stop-squid-jig-snagging/">The Rui Anti-Snag Mod — Squid Fishing Australia</a></p>Plain text credit:
Full steps & video: The Rui Anti-Snag Mod — https://www.squidfishing.com.au/guides/stop-squid-jig-snagging/