Shortening the notch will decrease pan drop required to fire the trap. Night latching gives me consistant pan drop on every trap without having to guess each time. When I set a trap I dont look at all. I hear the click and I know Im good to go. When trapping in water if there is any mud or other material on the pan notch it can decieve you into thinking your set where you want. Night latching takes all the guess work out. To each his own. LOL
I agree. lol
I was talking of the pan creep for those people who may not know its caused by the hole in the pan being bigger around than the bolt. Here's an exaggerated drawing to show what I mean...
When you raise the pan to full notch the bolt (represented red) shifts to one side of the pan. No matter how tight you have the bolt there will be no pan tension or very little when you begin to push down the pan until this bolt is pushed to the other side of the hole. That's pan creep. So shortening the notch means you don't get to push the pan down to remove the creep, therefore, you can't get a good constant pan tension. Make any sense to anyone?
Re-drilling and using over sized bolts that just fit the holes will help this, at least until the threads rust down some.
Of course if you don't use any pan tension on your traps it wouldn't matter much.
~ADC~