You have to take off the coating at both end's. On the end that goes on your downrigger spool take 8ft of the cable burn off the coating, then use sand paper to clean it up. you will see a nut in the spool make sure the uncoated cable touches this, it will with the 8ft of cleaned off cable. Then at the probe end I clean off about a foot the same way. Make your connections, clip off the excess and your rubber tape should cover the exposed metal except the last 1/4 inch at the probe.