When I was a lad I worked as a ‘trapper’ for a local clay club. None of this electronic nonsense, this was all man powered kit and we had a range of traps from home made to purpose built.
The cheaper purpose built ones often broke clays on launching because the clays weren’t held in long enough by a sprung clip, so they rattled down the arm and broke on exit.
To fix this on the fly we would put our fingers on the top of each clay and quickly remove just as we released the arm - no fingers were lost!! (Although one chap did mess around once and he loaded a hotdog into the arm of the trap, pretending it was his old fella, and when the guy shouted ‘pull’ he fired off a clay and the sausage and let out a small scream of pain but not before the shooter had let fly with both barrels, destroying both the clay and his fake knob/sausage!)
On your trap, it also looks like it’s triggered by stepping onto a plate - this will likely cause the trap to move at the point of firing unless it’s well weighted down, so maybe smear some grease onto the rubbers or make them thicker and whack a couple of sandbags onto the frame to help stabilise it when you trigger the release.
