GET INTO BOAT FISHING
Braid or mono? Leader or no leader? There is a time and a place for everything, as Dave Barham explains…
Choosing the correct line and leader.
WALK into any decent tackle shop, or surf through an online retailer’s website, and you’ll be faced with a mind-boggling array of monofilament, fluorocarbon, braid and hybrid lines. Choosing the right one for the job can appear to be quite daunting, but if you follow a few simple rules you will have no problems grabbing the right line for the job.
Hopefully, this guide will help you decide what type of line you should go for to suit the fishing you do.
MONO LINE
Only 10 years ago mono was by far the most popular boat fishing line, but times have changed, with braided line becoming an increasingly popular choice.
The great thing about mono is its price. A bulk spool can cost as little as £5. Nowadays it’s mostly used to fill reels for uptiding and fishing in shallow water. It’s also used as backing when loading a reel with more expensive braid, but it does still have its advantages over braid.
The big difference between mono and braid is its stretch. Mono will stretch considerably, making bites less detectable and feeling the bottom in deep water much more difficult. On the positive side, the stretch does iron out a few problems for the beginner boat angler. As the bites are less obvious, there is not the tendency to strike too early before the fish is hooked. In addition, the stretch in the line can soften any powerful dives or sudden head shakes when playing a hard-fighting fish that could otherwise result in the hook being pulled,
as it sometimes does when using braid.
When fishing the uptide method you can either fish with a slightly heavier mono, such as 22lb, right through or use 18lb mainline with a heavier mono leader of around 30 or 40lb. This second option makes casting safer and also helps when controlling the fish as it gets nearer the boat.
The only time using a shockleader for uptiding fails is when there is lots of weed because it will build up on the leader knot.
There are a number of manufacturers who produce ‘coated’ mono lines. Fluorocarboncoated mono line is quite popular for a number of reasons. it is nearly as invisible as pure fluorocarbon, but because it is just a coating on normal mono, the line still has a degree of stretch and is far more supple than pure fluorocarbon. it’s also cheaper than pure fluorocarbon, and makes a good mainline for lure fishing in shallow water.
POWER OF BRAID
all braided lines are much thinner than their equivalent breaking strain mono counterparts. The advantages of using braid are twofold.
First, it creates reduced tide resistance, allowing less lead weight to be used, which has major advantages in deeper water. second, braid has virtually no stretch so you can feel every little bump on the bottom or the tiniest of bites through your rod tip.
small bites can be so violent there is a tendency to strike too early and miss the fish, so rods used with braid should have a soft tip to counteract this.
Because braid is relatively expensive, compared to bulk spools of mono, it is a good idea to half-fill your reel with mono then add a couple of hundred metres of braid on top. Being so thin, it won’t take up much space on the reel.
i tend to use 30lb braid as standard for all my general boat fishing. By that i mean downtiding for cod, congers, tope and blonde rays. For all my other fishing i use 20lb braid on fixed-spool reels. This covers me for plaice, turbot, bream, bass, pollack, smoothhounds and everything else.
INVISIBLE FLUOROCARBON
Being virtually invisible in water, fluorocarbon is now widely used as trace line. I have used this line for my leaders and hooklengths for years, and I have complete faith in it. It’s often quite brittle, so when it does snap (not very often) it does so in style, literally shattering.
It has far less stretch than traditional mono, is also heavier and sinks faster. Fluorocarbon lines tend to be stiffer than mono, which again helps keep your traces straight and less prone to tangling.
Whether the fish see fluorocarbon line in the same way as we do we’ll never know, but if it can give the slightest chance of catching more fish, then it must be worthwhile using.
Some companies manufacture fluorocarbon mainline, and this has become popular with lure anglers in recent years, but I’m not sure just how good this is because it’s often very cheap.
SHOCKLEADERS
Mono line is far more abrasion resistant than braid and, as such, it is often used as a leader on reels loaded with braid mainline.
I use mono or fluorocarbon leaders for most of my saltwater fishing, with 30lb or 40lb as standard when uptiding, or 50lb when fishing rougher ground or when targeting tope to give that extra degree of abrasion resistance.
I also use 20lb fluorocarbon on my fixedspool reels, which are often loaded with 20lb or 25lb braid. This is mostly for the light-tackle fishing I do when targeting smoothhounds and bass with bait.
In all the aforementioned scenarios I like to have a long enough leader so that the end reaches from the my rod tip to the reel with at least three turns of the leader on the reel itself – about two rodlengths in total. Having the three or four turns on the reel and the extra length means you can hold on to a big fish once it gets near the boat without fear of the line snapping.
When lure fishing for bass, I use a much shorter leader, maybe just a rodlength of even shorter if I’m fishing over clean ground. For the latter scenario, it’s more about bridging the gap between mainline braid and lure, effectively having an invisible section immediately in front of the lure.
■ NEXT MONTH: Hooks and terminal tackle to get you fishing more effectively.