3-hook flapper
BeginnerAlso called Three-hook paternoster
The same idea with a third bait. More fish when they are small and shoaling; more tangles when they are not.
Put three small baits in the water for dabs, whiting and pouting.
Same knots as a two-hook flapper, plus one extra snood. The extra work is spacing, not clipping or a pendulum. Tangles teach you faster than a textbook.
Diagram
When to use
Shoaling small fish — dabs, whiting, pouting — on a pier or a close beach when you want three small baits in the water.
A winter pier or a close gutter full of small fish.
Ground and marks
Beach, Pier, Harbour. Ground: sand, shingle, mixed.
Shoaling small fish — dabs, whiting, pouting — on a pier or a close beach when you want three small baits in the water.
Do not punch it into a side wind at long range, and do not fish it for one big bait. A bigger fish wrapping three snoods is a mess.
Piers often fish through a tide once the shoal is in. Beaches still prefer a moving flood or the first of the ebb.
Marks: Beach, Pier, Harbour. Ground: sand, shingle, mixed.
Small hooks, small baits, recast often. If two hooks come back empty and one is stripped, the shoal is there — keep feeding that patch, do not wander off to the horizon.
Hooks 8–2. Lead: 3–5 oz.
Same as a two-hook: 40–60 lb backbone, three short 15–20 lb snoods that cannot reach each other. Rolling swivels. A 3–5 oz lead. Skip bait clips until you can already fish a two-hook cleanly.
How to tie it
- 01Keep snoods short and the gaps between them longer than a snood.
- 02Small hooks. This is not a ray rig.