DaHo Products
The Best Hollow Spectra Threading & Splicing
Needle Tools Available
DaHo Instructional and Educational Materials Sometimes, especially with the smaller sized threading needles, they will bow or slightly bend from normal use. They will still be the same diameter as they have been, with no creases or flat spots in the tube, just not as straight. This does not affect their use, but is a situation that can be easily ‘fixed’ if desired - you can straighten them with your hands. What you do is sit down and hold the needle end that is further away from the bow/bend in your hand. Usually, if you are right handed, hold the needle in your left hand, and visa versa. Position your hand on or close to your lap, holding the needle vertical. Then, looking down the shaft of the needle you are holding, you will be able to see the bend location. Position the needle in your bottom hand, so that the bow/bend is going away from your body. Then, with your other hand, position your thumb a little above and your first finger slightly below and more in line with the needle shaft leaving a small gap between them. Then, you can apply a pressure with your finger to the opposite side of the bow/bend location while using your thumb to hold the upper part of the needle above the bend location. Continue doing this, while moving your hand up the shaft of the needle only applying the pressure at the bow/bend location. It doesn’t take much pressure to see the effects of your efforts. Start out with a light pressure and increase it as needed. You will see it bending and can adjust the pressure as you go. You can reposition the needle in the hand that is holding it on the bottom, to realign the bow/bend so you can most easily see and work on it with your other hand. If the needle is rotating while you are trying to straighten it, hold it firmer in your bottom hand. You can also swap the ends of the needle to get a better perspective on the area of the needle that you need to straighten. You will find that after a very little practice, you will be able to straighten your needles with ease.
This page includes instructional and educational materials about how to use our DaHo hollow spectra needle tools. We are sorry that the pictures on this page are of lower resolution, but due to their number, they had to be reduced to have the page load faster.
Since all of our instructional and educational materials on this page are very long, we will be using a menu system to allow you to select a menu item and it will jump to the item you selected. When you are done, or anytime you want to return to the top of this page, just click on any of the 'Return to Menu' links on this page, or scroll up using the scroll bar.
DaHo Tech Tips Menu
1. General Usage Helpful Hints
These are helpful hints that can assist you in doing many of the basic tasks that are required in using hollow spectra needle tools. They are discussed here, in detail, so that all of the procedures that use these basic tasks can just reference them in their instructions.
1. Starting a needle in the end of your hollow spectra line
2. Inserting a needle into the side of the line
3. Feeding the needle inside the hollow center of the spectra line
4. Hollow spectra line and needle sizes
5. Threading needle and mono/fluoro line sizes
6. Straightening out DaHo Needles
2. Instructions on How to Use All DaHo Products
This section contains instructions on how to do all the various tasks you can do using our products. To learn how to do use our products, just click on the task below...
1. Opening up Hollow Spectra line with a Loop Splicing Needle
2. Splicing Hollow Spectra Lines Together
3. Making Hollow Spectra End Loops
4. Threading Mono/Flouro Lines Into Hollow Spectra
Also, if you have any feedback on how to use our needles or other materials that you think are needed or would be helpful to our customers, please let us know what you are interested in and we will add it to our to do list of DaHo Tech Tips.
Starting a needle in the end of your hollow spectra line - One of the more 'challenging' tasks, at first, can be to initially insert the point of your needle into the middle, hollow section of your spectra line. The spectra line is usually fuzzy at the end and will flatten out when any pressure is put on it, making the center hollow chamber of the braid difficult to find.
The recommended place to work with your needles is on the edge of a table or other flat surface. Put the line on the top of the table, straight for a foot or so, and place the end of the line at the edge of the table. This position gives you the ability to position the needle in the right position so it appears that it is extending from the line's position.
You need to use the point of your needle, the smaller the better for this purpose at first, to find the center of the spectra line. Once you have found the hollow center of the braid, the outer part of the line should look consistent in color and texture, and your needle should go up inside the spectra line easily, depending upon the outer size of the needle and the size/weight of the line. Below is a threading needle inserted into the end of the hollow spectra line. If the picture resolution was better, you could see that the spectra with the needle in it is the same color and texture of the braid.
If your needle point keeps going through the line or you can see the needle being exposed through the line material in a non-consistent manner, your needle is not in the hollow center section of the line. Try and repoint the needle toward the center of the spectra line when trying to insert it, will help find the open braid center.
Trying to make the end of the spectra line more round can also help. Sometimes a little twirling action on the needle will also help it find the center of the braid. If you think the end of the spectra line has been abused too much, cut off an inch or so and reposition the line at the edge of the table and try again.
It really very simple to do once you have the hang of it.
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Inserting a needle into the side of the line - Many procedures require you to insert your needle into the side of your hollow spectra line. In this task, you also are looking for the hollow center of the braid as when you are starting at the line's end. But in this task, you must start the insertion of the needle point at a 45% angle to the spectra line. In the following picture, you can see how this is done.
The best way to do this task, is to hold a 1" section of your spectra line, where you want to insert your needle, down on the table top with your fingers. Then, insert the needle point into the spectra line and stop before the point hits the table surface. Start bringing the angle of the needle down towards the line while searching for the line's hollow center. Once the needle tip is in the hollow spectra line, you now have to find the center of the braid. A good way of doing this is to hold the line down on a table surface about 1/4" in front of where the needle tip entered the line. Then, using the inserted point of the needle, lift up the line a little while it is bunching up, searching for the center.
As with the end entry method, once you have found the hollow center channel, your needle will start going up the line and it will also be a consistent size and texture.
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Feeding the needle inside the hollow center of the spectra line - Regardless of how you started your needle into the hollow center braid of the spectra line, feeding the needle and its attached contents, if any, is done the same way. You always want the line stretched out straight, at least a foot or more if possible, on a table or other surface in front of the needle. Sit with the needle in hand, pointed at the place the line comes off of the surface about 6 inches away.
Thread the line onto the needle, keeping the needle in the same straight line as the spectra line being pulled off of the table surface. The shape of the needle point will keep the needle in the spectra line's hollow braided middle as long as the needle and line are kept in a straight line.
Pull the line over the needle, from the point down a few inches on the needle. You will develop a process with your hands to pull the line onto the needle with one set of fingers, and hold it on the needle with the other hand until it bunches up on the back part of the needle.
When this happens, hold the needle and surrounding line close to the point, and reaching toward the back of the needle, slide the bunched up line off the needle and down any attached lines, being careful not to put too much pressure on any attached lines that could release them from the needle.
You can continue in this manner until you have gone as far as needed to complete the task. When you are at that point, you just reach up and hold the line in from of the needle point, fold it over and push the needle point out of the spectra line. After the needle is removed, usually along with any attached line ends. The spectra line being threaded, will have no ill effects from the process. Below you can see a threading needle being removed from the center of a spectra line.
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Hollow spectra line and needle sizes - The middle of each size/weight of hollow spectra line is only so big. We have attached our recommendations of applicable spectra line sizes for each of our needle products on our Product Offerings page. If your needle is very difficult to thread inside of your hollow spectra line, you may want to recheck our line sizes.
Our needle should go up the specified size/weight of the spectra lines we specified with our products. But, all brands of hollow spectra line products are not exactly the same size. Also, each person using our needles, may have different perceptions of what does, and does not, work right.
If your needle feels tight while threading it in the spectra, and think the needle you are using is too large for your spectra line, you might try to first run an appropriately sized loop splicing needle up the line to 'open up' the line. This opens up the line's braid structure a little, so that a larger needle can comfortably fit into the line. Instructions for opening up your hollow spectra line are included on this page. Return to the menu and you will find them.
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Threading needles and mono/fluoro line sizes - All of our threading needles are made from 304 Stainless Steel hypodermic tubing. The industry standard variance of the IDs of these tubes is up to .002" due to the manufacturing process. We make every attempt to ensure that our threading needles match our published specifications. But, in some cases, our needles may be slightly smaller than our specifications, as new needle orders arrive from our supplier.
As a general rule, please try to select a threading needle that is .002", or more larger, than the size of your mono/fluoro line. It will be a lot easier to use as it is very difficult to fit an exact size match of line into any needle.
We have created an spreadsheet that has pages for both mono and fluoro lines. We have two different options for you to use. Each of the line types (Mono and Fluoro) are on separate pages on the spreadsheet. We will keep adding new lines as new data becomes available.
The first and preferred way to view this data is with our PDF File Version. If you have an industry standard Adobe PDF viewer add-in installed in your web browser, it will bring both pages of the data as a web page. You can scroll up and down to view all the available data and can expand and reduce the size of the data for easier reading. And, when you are done, you can just hit the back button to return to this page. For the PDF version push here.
If you do not have a PDF viewer on your computer, but do have Microsoft Excel, you can select the Excel Version and can either bring the file into Excel on your computer, or download the Excel file for local viewing. On the Excel version, you can select the line type on the page tab in the lower left corner of the window. This spreadsheet has a page for each line type - Mono and Fluorocarbon. For the Excel version push here.
Also, ensure that the end of your mono/fluoro line is trimmed or cut in a way that there is no edge material that would make the end of the line larger. You can add as much as .010" to a line size just by the way it was cut.
Another issue is that in many cases, the size of the mono/fluoro line is actually larger than the manufacturers specifications.
If you do have one of our threading needles that is not accepting a size of line that it should, per our specifications, please email us and we will analyze and resolve the situation for you.
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Straightening out DaHo Needles - All DaHo needles are made from 304 Stainless Steel Hypodermic tubing. In order to keep the outside size of all the threading needles as small as possible, thin walled tubing is used. Our loop splicing and reverse latch needles use heaver walled tubing as their inner sizes are not a factor. They are all very strong and will not fail under normal use.
If they are bent far enough to crease the tubing wall, they will not function properly and will have to be replaced. This would require some type of pressure on the needle that would not happen during any normal use.
Opening Up Hollow Spectra line with a Loop Splicing Needle
Daho Needle Type Used: Loop Splicing
When you are working with hollow spectra line that is small for the size of needle you want to use in it, you can take a loop splicing needle that does fit well in the line and thread it through the line opening up the braid of the hollow spectra line. This procedure will double the interior size of the hollow spectra line so you can use larger needles that you need to do the ultimate job you are trying to do.
First, you have to insert a loop splicing needle that fits inside the hollow spectra line that you are working with. In the following picture you can see the loop needle inserted into the line. You will notice that the needle makes the line a little larger than the line without the needle.
You keep threading the loop needle into the spectra line. As you do, the line will bunch up on the needle. As this happens, hold onto the spectra and the needle close to the needle point and with your other hand, slide the bunched up line down the needle.
In the above picture, you can see the needle embedded in the line. You can also see the loop on the end of the needle and can see that the line in back of the needle's loop is much larger than the line in front of the needle.
Keep threading the loop needle through the hollow spectra line as far as you want the open line to be. When you have reached your goal, stick the point of the needle out the side of the spectra line and remove it. You should not pull on the opened up spectra behind the needle as it will close down if pressure it put on it. As you can see from the following picture, the opened spectra line is much larger than the closed line. Now, your opened up hollow spectra line will accept larger needles and lines inside with much less resistance.
One of the most valuable features of hollow Spectra line is the ability to splice two different hollow Spectra lines together, without any knots, and maintain 100% of the line's strength. Besides the most obvious feature of being able to extend your line’s length to keep your reel's spool full, you can also splice different sizes of hollow Spectra lines together to address specific needs at certain locations in the line. You can also splice on pre-built topshot or wind-on end sections with a minimum of effort. In the example, we are going to splice a white line (coming from the left) and red line (coming from the right) together, so you can identify each line better in the pictures. So, to keep it simple, you should pick each line you are splicing as being the white or red line, when using the instructions below. So, the first thing we do is to insert the needle into the side of the red line about 15" from the end of the red line. Insert most of the needle. Once that is done, we put the end of the white line into the loop or latch, depending on which type of needle you are using. When you have taken the needle and end of the white line about 12” up the red line, bring the needle out and pull the attached tag end of the white line out 3” or 4" as shown below in the upper right of the picture. First, you must select a spot about 24" from the end of your line. Insert your Reverse Latch needle at that location with the tip of the needle going towards the end of the line, as shown in the picture below.
Splicing Hollow Spectra Lines Together
Daho Needle Type Used: Loop Splicing or Reverse Latch
What we are going to do is basically insert the end of each line inside the end of the other line about 12" on each side. When the lines tighten, this will cause two ‘Chinese Finger Cuffs’ in the spliced ends of the lines and will secure the two lines together. 
Then, insert the needle tip into the white line, going towards the spool about 1" from the red line. Put the end of the red line in the loop or latch of the needle and again thread the needle and the red line about 12" up the white line.
When finished, remove the needle and pull the tag end of the red line out from the green line about 3 or 4" and remove the line from the needle. The lines will look like the picture below.
As you can see in the above picture, there is a gap in the middle of our splice. The way you resolve that is to pull the tag ends of each line until the center of the splice is together and solid. Now, from the center of the splice, smooth out both outer lines with your fingers going away from the center splice. Once you have done this on both sides, we have to remove the extra tag end lines.
Holding the tag end of the line, pull down the line that it goes into about 1/2" and cut off the tag end where it is now entering the other line. After you have cut the tag end off, you can smooth out the outer line going away from the center splice. The tag end of the line you just cut will disappear inside of the outer line you are smoothing out. Do this for both sides of the splice.
As you can see above, the lines are now spliced together, without any knots and with 100% of the line's strength. Below is a close up of the completed splice.
Splices can be mastered very easily and will save the average fisherman hundreds of dollars, over time. By using splices, you should never have to buy another full reel of line again, unless you want to go to a different type of line. If your line gets cut or damaged, you can just add to it, or cut out the damaged parts and your line will perform like new.
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Making Hollow Spectra End Loops
Daho Needle Type Used: Reverse Latch
Many topshots and wind-ons terminate with a loop. You can also end your hollow Spectra line with a loop. Then, you can quickly and easily change the end section of your line with pre-made loop terminated topshots and wind-ons. This process requires a Reverse Latch needle to complete as the line holding mechanism must be able to open and release the line in the middle of the operation.
Continue threading the needle into the line. When it is mostly in, put the line in the needle latch that will be about the size of the loop you want at the end of your line - usually 3-4". Keep threading the needle into the line for a total of 12".
When you have threaded the needle 12", bring it out of the line, pulling the looped line in the latch with it.
As you keep pulling the needle and line out from the line, the line will begin to turn inside out.
You can slide the outer line down, toward the spool end and also use the tag end of the line to finish turning the 12" of threaded line inside out.
At this point, remove the needle from the newly formed loop and smooth out the inside out line.
Now, insert the needle into the line about 1/2" from where the tag end of the line comes out of the inside out line. Thread the needle about 5" or so, and put the tag end of the line into the needle latch as shown above.
Thread about 12" total and exit the line with the needle tip. Pull the needle and the attached line end out of the threaded line.
Remove the needle, leaving the tag end of the line out as shown. Now, using the loop, smooth out the threaded line and close up the gap between the two threaded parts.
Also, smooth out the upper threaded line so it is all smooth and there is no gap between the two sections of threaded line. When you are done, it should look like the line below.
Now, hold onto the tag end still exposed and pull the end out 1/2" or so and cut it off. Smooth the line out and the cutoff tag end will go inside of the outer line.
Your splice is now done. You can attach any loop terminated extension to your line with 100% line strength.
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Threading Mono/Flouro Lines Into Hollow Spectra
Daho Needle Type Used: Threading
One of the major features of hollow Spectra is the ability to thread mono/flouro types of lines into it. Spectra is very strong, but does has some limitations. It does not stretch, does not deal with abrasion well, and is very visible to the 'locals'. Many fisher persons like to extend the end of their Spectra with a topshot or wind-on made of monofilament and/or fluorocarbon type lines. These lines can be threaded inside of the hollow Spectra line, without knots and with almost full line strength. You first select a hollow threading needle of the correct size so your mono/flouro line will fit inside snugly as shown below.
You then thread the threading needle, with the mono/flouro line in it, into the end of your hollow Spectra line as shown below.
Typically, you will thread the needle and mono/flouro line into the Spectra for 3 to 5 feet. While threading the line, keep sliding the Spectra line down the needle and attached line. When you have reached the desired length exit the line as shown below.
Hold the line in back of the needle and extract the needle, leaving the line end exposed as shown below. At this point, the end of the mono/flouro line should be prepared by removing any sharp edges so it will not cut or fray the inside of the Spectra line with use.
The tip of the mono/flouro line is then inserted into the hollow spectra by pushing up on the spectra.
The point where the end of the hollow Spectra line and embedded mono line meet, AKA the join, must be secured so the inside mono line will not slip until the stretch on the Spectra line causes the braid to tighten on the inside mono line and binds the two lines together. It is called the 'Chinese Finger Cuff'. There a number of ways to secure this join point:
1. Glue - There are a number of special glues available that are designed to hold the mono and Spectra line materials together. Glue is usually used regardless of what other methods are used.
2. Serve – Serving is where another lighter line is tightly wound around both sides of the join point covering the end of the spectra and the start of the mono. – like is done in the middle of a bowstring.
3. Crimp - Special metal line crimps and associated kits are available to secure the join spot.
We recommend you ask your local DaHo, or Spectra line, dealer to recommend the securing methods you need, and use that product’s instructions to complete your mono threading task. 
On this last picture, a professional wind-on connection is shown. This one uses a serve of about 2" and glue to ensure a good knot-less connection.
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