It happens when the fish are on, the sun is high and everyone on board is watching. A bird nest on the baitcaster, a wind knot in the braid, a coil of slack line wrapped around the rod tip. The instinct is to pull. Don't. Pulling tightens the mess and turns a two minute fix into a cut line and a lost lure.
Every tangle has a cause, and it is almost always in the cast before it.
If the tangle happened while trolling, the lure is still moving and the line is loaded. Thumb the spool, put the engine in neutral and let the boat settle before you touch anything. A line under tension behind a moving boat will open a finger, and a sudden slack-off can whip a treble hook back at your face. Never put your fingers between the line and the spool while the drag is running. Stop the boat first, then work.
Press your thumb firmly on the spool so it cannot turn, then open the side plate or press the free spool button. Pull the line out straight and gently until you feel the first loop, then pick that loop loose with a fingernail or a hook point. Work outward one loop at a time. If the nest is shallow and the line runs free in under two minutes, you are done. If it is packed tight and every pull makes it worse, stop pulling. That is the moment to cut.
A wind knot is not bad luck. It is loose line on the spool that left in coils and came back crossed. You usually feel it before you see it: a small lump ticking through the guides. Strip ten or fifteen metres past the knot, run the braid through your fingers for fuzziness, and retie the leader. A wind knot left in place fails on the next decent fish, almost always at the hookset.
Give yourself two minutes. If the tangle is not clearly loosening by then, cut above the damage and retie. You lose a metre of braid. Line that has been crushed and heated by friction can lose a third of its strength and then fail quietly on a good fish. A spinning spool should sit two or three millimetres below the lip; filled to the edge it throws loose coils on every cast.
A short note after each trip, wind, lure and how the line behaved, shows your own pattern. Keep it in the B7R app next to the tide times for Shuwaikh and Shuaiba, so you can pick the calmer window when wind is what is causing the mess.
Two minutes of picking, then cut. Check the sea conditions before you leave and you spend less of the day fighting line and more of it fishing.
Download the B7R app free on Google Play and keep tides, sea state and your catch log in one place: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.q8dm.b7r