Dave Willhide originally showed me one of these and strongly suggested I make myself one five or six years ago. I was like the boat cleat and rod handle guys until I tried it. A stump puller is basically a round smooth piece of wood with four or five wraps of duct tape in the middle. 8-12 inches seems to be the ideal length. A broken shovel handle is ideal to cut one from. Thick enough to do the job, and just the right size to wrap your hand around.
http://www.yumabassman.com/gallery/deta ... mage_id=61
The idea is if you get hung up down deep where you just can't reach the hook to undo it, and nothing else seems to work you can wrap your line around your stump puller about six times and pull it loose or break it off. Sometimes you will straighten out the hook. Other times you will break the line, and once in a great while when you have a fish wrapped up in the trash you will bring up the fish and everything he has wrapped your line around.
Absolutely do not try to do this with your hand. If you succeed in putting enough force on it to break 65 pound or even 50 pound braided line you can (and probably will) cut your hand to and even into the bone. Bad news. It can mean a painful end to a good day of fishing. I posted on another fishing group once about stump pullers and got derision from the reel handle and boat cleat crowd. To be fair I tried both. If you think 65 pound braided line will slice into your hand you should see what it does to a rod handle, and then it still doesn't work well. Then I tried the boat cleat method. If you only make a couple wraps braided line just slips right around the cleat as you back off the boat instead of breaking it or pulling it out. If you tie it off like dock line it doesn't slip, but the result is still bad. It usually breaks at the cleat instead of straightening the hook, or breaking at the hook knot like you would prefer. Might as well have just cut the line with a knife.
Yesterday I had a tough day only managing to stick 3 of about a dozen bites in my first two rounds of fishing a 3 round tournament. In the third round I failed to get a good hookset on my first solid bite and my second wrapped me up hard in the brush I was flipping. "Dang," I was thinking. "I still just can't seem to get it together." Instead of panicing I had my partner get out the stump puller and started steady pressure to get my line and hook back. To my surprise the fish was still pinned. The stump puller put our first keeper of the round in the boat, and improved both of our attitudes.
I had the fortune to have two more opportunities to put one in the livewell. A 4.7 and a 3. Both fish were tricky, with the 4+ not cooperating about climbing in the net. We didn't panic and we got it in the boat where the hook promptly fell right out of the fish. The 3 wrapped itself around the trolling motor and I had to unhook and lip the fish in the water to land it. All three fish were problem or potential problem fish, but I credit my stump puller with giving me back my confidence and allowing me to remain levelheaded enough to do what I needed to do to get them in the boat. Those three fish gave me almost 9 poounds for the round, and combined with my fish from the previous two rounds squeaked me ahead for a first place finish overall for the day.
To the the boat cleat & rod handle crowd I say Pbllpppppppppht!!!
