Casting nets but catching nothing

Renewed my year old experiments with the sepia spaghetti. There is just no way to get the damn things to set in an agreeable shape. No matter how I mould and press them, as soon as they hit the hot oil, the sods explode into all manner of crazed spaghetti hairstyles - none appropriate for holding eggs as nests or whitebait as nets. Oh, it now looks decided upon that they will be nets and not nests as quail's eggs are just too expensive to include in a dinner of this magnitude.
The only result I get that is anywhere near acceptable is first dipping the sepia spaghetti into a batter of black rice flour and carefully curling a number of strands around and around the whitebait before dropping into the oil (picture). It works but is not a realistic means of cooking 50 of these before serving along with other considerations. Experimentation and deliberation continues...