What’s the Best Fishing Line?
Casting out our four rigs baited with fresh menhaden chunks, we awaited the bite. This was the third phase of an opportune experiment. It happened some time ago during a red-hot rockfish chum bite that stretched from the Bay Bridge down past Tolley Point and lasted well over a month. The bite was so consistent for so long we knew it would end soon.
It did not take long for the action to start. First one rod tip twitched, then the second and in very short order we were both hooked up with rockfish in the 27- to 28-inch class. Both were excellent fish and full of spunk.
The rigs we fished were not identically set up. Deciding this was an excellent opportunity to test line types, we were varying our rigs each day. For simplicity’s sake we chose to make all comparisons with fluorocarbon leaders of 18 to 24 inches and 20-pound test.
The widespread myth is that fluorocarbon is invisible. It’s not, and anyone can see that by doing a simple on-site, in-water test between mono and fluoro. Fluorocarbon is probably slightly less visible (20 percent per refractory numbers), stronger when wet and harder than mono. Reason enough to justify the investment, even though it can be five times more expensive.
The real question in our minds was how much difference did the main lines make? If we had the most stealthy leader setup available, what was the impact of the more distant main line visibility to the whole operation? We were to find out it was going to be noticeable, as well as variable.
We started out with reels loaded with 20- and 30-pound Power Pro and 20-pound clear monofilament. It didn’t take long to scrub the braided lines. They had mostly under-performed compared to mono setups, not by a great but by a noticeable amount. Though some days the bite was close, generally the fish showed an adversity to braid compared to mono.
We then compared the performance of mono to fluorocarbon main lines. In my initial research on fluoro, one of the two strongest arguments for it was a live test by Berkeley Fishing Products, the initial developer of fluorocarbon line.
Installing vertical sections of fluoro and mono lines in live tanks, each attached to counters, company researchers noted that the bass in residence bumped into the fluoro lines almost twice as often as the monofilament sections.
The second and most convincing argument came from my canvassing of Eastern Shore charter captains, a group as famous for thrift as for fish sense. A healthy portion use fluorocarbon.
We went on to compare high-quality 20-pound mono with similar quality 20-pound fluorocarbon main lines. During the first week or so, they seemed equally productive.
However, we noticed that mono was only the equal of fluorocarbon as long as the tide was running. When the currents slacked, fluorocarbon-lined rigs enjoyed a larger and larger success edge. During the total slack, we rarely got a bite on anything except the fluorocarbon lines.
However, the issue was still not completely resolved because the fluoro lines were not nearly as comfortable to use. They were stiff with memory and got stiffer the more they were used. They also did not cast as well as mono and needed constant applications of line dressing to hold down on backlashes.
Eventually we settled on a compromise. Fluoro-coated lines (with a monofilament core) proved to have virtually the same full-current and slack-tide effectiveness as pure fluoro and handled as well as straight monofilament. By the end of that season, we were well satisfied with our findings. For chumming, I still religiously use fluoro-coated monofilament.