Hi Travis,
I like the innovative thinking, and I might just try it myself too. Also, I would like you to know that your generosity in sharing has been appreciated.
On a recent trip to Sulawesi (Indonesia), I was fighting what I guessed to be a reasonably-sized fish (from the way the fish fought, old salts on board speculated that it was probably an Oil fish), when the line suddenly went slack. I reeled in the line to find that my leader was cut just about 1 or 2 cm away from my leader/ braid FG knot.
On the same trip, I experienced another similar situation, but this was on light tackle (12lbs line). My line broke a few times so I ran out of line on my spool & resorted to joining a length of spare line. A fish took my jig, & somewhere through the fight, the line went slack & I reeled back to find out that the line was cut 1 cm or less from the joining knot between the 2 lengths of braid.
On a trip to Maldives, I was casting light spoons when I saw 2 cudas chase my spoon and my braid-leader knot!
In Maldives, some Maldivian fishermen use "rubber octopus" (attached image) as to great success on many species of fish including big dogtooth & GTs. They use young coconut leaves to tie to dead corals & they hook the rigged rubber octopus to a leaf then they toss the rig overboard. when it sinks to the bottom, they give a hard jerk on the handline to get the hook tear through the young coconut leaf, then they retrieve the lure quickly. Hit-rates are very high with this technique.
These accounts give me the impression that even knots do attract attacking fish, less to say rubber skirts.
Also, I think since rubber octopus can be so effective on the species which we target during popping, there is a high chance that rubber spinnerbait skirts might get attacked too since they do look somewhat similar to me.
Cheers,
Lance
