Line visibility....does it matter?

[CrappieJohn]

We are beginning to see quite a few posts about the braid/mono decision. It is not an easy question to tackle, but I'd like to share something I saw happen a couple years ago....

Here in Rochester we have a put/take trout lake with very clear water. Seeing bottom at 16-18 feet is not hard fromm in a shelter. There are bass, crappies, sunfish, bait-sized perch and a few roughies to round things out nicely, but the trout are what gets the attention. When fishing gets in a rut I have been known to go there and take on the trout just for something to do.

One day I was fishing the trout with a rod that I use for walleye jigging and was spooled with 1/8 braid. To this I added about 6 feet of mono at the end since these trout are notorious for being line conscious. I had a small jig with a minnow on the line, but because I was fishing near a spring I added a couple very small shot to the line, one on the mono the other was on the braid (the braid wanted to bow with the current the spring was causing). It didn't take long for a few crappies to show up along with a handful of sunfish. This is where things got interesting. I was able to look down into the water ( I was in a shack and the water was about 15 feet deep right there...bottom as plain as day)and see my bait along with the splits. The sunfish began to zone in on the minnow and the split on the mono. They'd even take little nips at that split. The crappies eventually got in on this activity too. With maybe ten fish hovering around the line, the float was nodding quite a bit, but these fish would do nothing with the split on the braid. Thinking that they were too far below the braid to see the split on it, I brought the whole mess up and shortened that mono leader to about two feet and dunked everything again. Forgetting about the bow in the line I had those two splits about a foot apart. The fish came right back into the bait and once again began to nip at the split on the mono. They would come nose up to the split on the braid, but not one fish would so much as bump it.

To see if this was in fact a sight issue, I reeled up yet another time and added back a lot of mono to the line....like enought to fish from the reel to the bottom. I placed splits at four different depths above the bait and all four of those splits had fish tapping them. This took place until a nice brookie of a couple pounds took the minnow and tore things up.

In lieu of what I watched, I decided that maybe this braid stuff was not such a good thing to have on the pannie rods. I fished my crappie lake a couple days later and when the hot hole became apparent, I dropped a rod with braid/ short mono leader down rigged identical to the hot rod with pure

mono. The bite dropped off dramatically. I put the mono only rig back in there and bang....right back in the saddle.

So....does it matter? To me it does. I will not use the braids for panfish or crappies choosing to use more sensitive equipment for strike detection. Besides, I have found that if I was hitting and the feel of a strike I was hitting way too late in most instances. Something too that a lot of anglers fail to see as a problem while using the braids for panfish is that with limited or no stretch in the line they are probably tearing a ton of fish off the hook at the hookset.

In my opinion, pannies and crappies are way too wary and can be put off by lines that are not crystal clear. Yes, there will be days when a guy trips up on a bite that is so hot you could catch fish fishing with steel cable, but on those days when the funk is out and about you need to consider doing more than downsize your offerings. You may have to downsize your lines too and you may have to hang the bait on a near-invisible thread to ilicit hits. This can't be done with braid and often times , I am convinced, even a mono or fluoro leader may not be enough to separate the braid from the bait.

If a person is looking at walleye rigging, I think the braid has a bit more utility. Northern fishermen can rely on the stuff and those who do lakers can get the most out of using the braids when jigging and baiting in really deep water. All of these fish are more aggressive and spend much less time looking at the bait.

It is resally hard to tell someone to not use something based on personal experience. Circumstances are never static and change constantly. Fish in one water behave different for the same specie in another body of water. Weather influences and feeding periods manipulate fish behaviors. Colors can drive a person nuts trying to drop "just the right" one.

This senario should be veiwed as proof that a "one size fits all" approach to fishing probably is not the best approach. The senario should also serve to show how choosing your line by "species" might be more feasible than by its make-up.

Ultimately the judging of which line to use will fall on the angler's shoulders, either by what he/she has read or tried. The best advice I can give is to consider whether clear vs opaque will be at issue with your target species and if the answer cames back as yes, go with a premium crystal clear mono or fluoro to opt on the safe side.

As I have said...the answers are complex to this question. No one line is going to be the great cure-all. If you take some time to consider what you intend for the line to do though, you can probably up your odds of finding favor with whatever you decide on. With technology marching straight ahead with new products designed to "improve" our fishing, some cases might show that the pace needs to be put in check a bit. New and improved are scarey words in the tackle world and are not always the best answer to an often asked question.

[Steve Foss]

Tom: Good field work, excellent thoughts.

I fish almost always from a heated shelter in winter. Some for walleyes, mostly for lakers. I avoid braids for lakers, even though they wouldn't ice up in my house, because those fish can make very sudden, powerful runs, especially when they get to 5 lbs and above, and I like a line that stretches a bit, so the line/rod/reel drag combination absorbs the shock. While I do fish in 100 FOW sometimes, I'm usually a bit shallower, and I don't think the line stretch of mono keeps me from hooking up or getting a good set when the fish hits, particularly since there's far less line out down my hole than there would be on an open-water cast, for example.

Lakers are not line shy, but I still tie on a fluorocarbon leader the last three feet, below a barrel or ball-bearing swivel (eliminates line twist from spinning jigging lures).

I used to think walleye were line shy, but I've revised that thinking after catching several on black braided tip-up line with wire quick-strike rigs, and seeing folks pulling them in hand over fist through the ice using superbraids with no mono leaders. I suspect they may be more line shy in very clear water, but the three lakes around here I typically fish walleyes on are stained or cloudy.