Spiderbeam Pole Clips

A long time ago, I discovered that silicone rubber, from old egg microwaving cups, lying beneath a jubilee clip was a very good way to stop fishing pole sections from slipping.

So good is this system, in fact, that a pole will snap in heavy winds before the pole sections ever slip (and that's from experience!)

But the problem with my egg-cup silicone clip system was that you had to remove and relay them every time the pole went back up again.  That means you become lazy and avoid pulling it down, for not wanting to go to the hassle of doing the work all over again the following day.  Sometimes, laziness leads to broken poles!

If you use the recommended length of shrink tubing, it always creases-up hard like this.

So, I decided to buy some good-looking clips from Spiderbeam in Germany.  Price reasoanable, but it does mount with postage costs on top.  The kit of clips I selected was the one for the 12m Spiderbeam pole.  As I haven't got a Spiderbeam pole, but just a normal cheap fishing pole, a couple of the kit clips are thus redundant.

A few days later, much to the credit of Spiderbeam and the postal systems, the clips arrived.  What are they like?


Well, the clips are nice quality stainless steel for starters.  Important for a pole which in my case gets covered in salt-laden air every time it blows a gale (even though we're a few miles from the sea!)  Unlike shop-bought stainless steel clips you tend to get in DIY stores, these clips are not too thick and hard, so they are quite easy to bend.  But you can find identical, quality stainless clips on E-bay...

As for the rubber padding, this was a bit of a disappointment. You have to cut the rubber strip into the correct lengths yourself, for which a table of measurements and admittedly very clear instructions is provided, should you somehow be unable to just do it by eye.  Then you are told to slip a slightly shorter length of shrink tubing over the rubber and clip, so that this keeps it all together.

It occurred to me that shrink tubing isn't particularly designed for external use, where it will be exposed to strong sunshine for a number of years.  I looked this up on the 3M site, which seems to say, in a rather convoluted manner, that black shrink tubing only has limited UV resistance.  The saving grace is that it's very easy and very cheap to replace it if it does crack after a while.   In practice, I'd just replace it with PVC tape.

The simple solution to avoid creases is using a series of shorter lengths!

Don't get me wrong - this is a system that is perfectly fine, and works a treat and the clips grip that pole much better than my egg-cup silicone system.

I found the instructions to cover almost all the rubber with shrink tubing to be problematic in that once you fasten the clip, the tubing inevitably wrinkles up as the circumference reduces, leading to quite stiff creases on the inside face of the clip.  Whilst these probably won't damage your pole, they are very unwelcome and partly undo the benefits of using soft rubber padding.  Spiderbeam does say in the instructions that creasing may happen, but that applying some more heat will "easily" remove them.  In reality, added heating makes very little difference once hard creases have formed, and then they just stay put.

Voila!  No more creases!

The solution to this is as simple as it is odd that Spiderbeam seem not to have cottoned-on to it.  Instead of using a long length of tubing, just cut up three shorter sections of about an inch or so.  This entirely avoids the creasing problem whilst still allowing the rubber to be held very securely in place (shrink tubing is pretty strong stuff!)

In summary, the Spiderbeam kit is not an unreasonable one, and contains all you need to make good fasteners for your pole.  The clips have a very well-formed running thread but aren't cut through like cheaper clips, which fail quite easily, having been weakened. 

But you can get the same clips for about 75p each (E-bay, etc), soft rubber costs next-to-nothing or can be found around the house, and electrical tape is just as good to keep the rubber in place.  So, you could save yourself maybe £15 or more on the Spiderbeam kit if you make your own.

Normal recommendations are to place the clips on the bottom of each section, butted up against the top of the one below it.  This is what I have always done, and it works fine.  But it has set me thinking, because poles almost always split from the top of a section as a result of over-stressing in strong winds.  I do wonder whether an additional set of rubberised clips might add a little strength to the pole.  Until the pole breaks, I'm making-do with a well-wrapped preemptive layer of Duck Tape around the top of each section.  Using this tape to repair an already badly split 10m pole has kept it in service for about a year already, so don't throw your snapped poles away too quickly!