Dr.Fish barrel swivels went into a tired tackle box in August

Fifty of the DFTSYB0 went into a very tired tackle box in the middle of August and maybe half have been tied on since. Dr.Fish list the barrel swivel in everything from #12 up to #12/0, and the pack I took was the #12, which measures 0.28 inches and carries a 20 lb rating. A few dollars for fifty of them lands under what the big box store charges per swivel and a long distance below a blister pack of Spro or AFW. Working out what is actually inside a package is something I do more often than I fish, and terminal tackle is the easiest thing in the whole shop to overpay for.

They spin. Dry or wet, no crunch when you roll one between your fingers, and that is the entire job. Black nickel over brass and stainless is the build, and the finish has stayed even on the ones that have been in and out of the water, no flaking at the eyes yet. The whole 50 count pack weighs 0.02 pounds, so it disappears in a bag. Rolling a swivel between finger and thumb tells you a lot and these turn freely enough that a spinner has not put a single twist in my leader. Bigger sizes in this same range get used on serious rigs, shark stuff at six hundred pound class, which is well past anything I will ever hook, but it says the poundage ratings are not fantasy.

My honest reservation is that there is a better swivel out there and it costs more. The pricier machined designs feel stronger in the hand, and if you are chasing something that pulls back hard, that is where I would spend. These are the ones you tie on happily and cut off without a second thought, which is a real category and not an insult. Size labelling took me two goes to understand, because a #12 is tiny and a 12/0 is enormous and the listing does not hold your hand at all. Buying two or three sizes at once is the move, people run #12, #7, #3, #1 and 3/0 together and never seem to hit a bad batch. 4.5 stars from 3,949 ratings with 100 packs moving a month and a #7,742 rank in Sports and Outdoors is a solid, boring, unexciting record, and boring is what I want from a conector.

Does the black nickel hold up on these after a full season in salt, or does the finish start lifting round the eye and take the brass with it?