Braid guys - what's your take?

[MassYak85]

I can't say I've done enough side by side comparison to say definitively that the fish are significantly affected by seeing braid. 

 

 

I'll tell you what I'm not going to start doing....fishing 50lb braid in place of my 12lb fluoro for shakeyheads in 15ft of visibility. 

[HookRz]

look, I don't want to break the news there is no Santa to anyone, but job one for these pros is to sell stuff. That's what buys them their beans. Make no mistake about that. It's been proven fluorocarbon is not invisible in water, any more than tubular glass is invisible in air. He was short pitching. The fish isn't bothered by a huge sparkly boat covered with gaudy adds, a man in a multi-colored sponsor suit, a 4/0 hook, but thin braid freaks them out? Really?

 

The main  tell; who believes he was conducting leader experiments on the water with the tournament (and his salesmanship value) on the line?

 

That said I usually do use short leads that don't go through the guides , made of actual fluorocarbon leader material, not soft line made to be cast, for abrasion reasons only. I live in the land of toothy critters and Zebra Mussel covered docks. Neither have ant respect for 40# braid. 

[NHBull]

Braid only as long as it doesn't touch the bottom.

If it touches the bottom, it get a FC leader

 

If my livelihood depended on it, I would do much more testing.

 

[MichaelCopeland]

I use straight braid mostly. Sometimes I use some of the mono line I have for a leader, Carolina rig for example. Don't really think it makes much of a difference if any. When I use mono it always seems to get a little out of whack when I tighten my knots down because just pulling the tag end to tighten it doesn't fully secure it for some reason. I don't have that problem with braid plus the knots are way easier to tie with it. Never tried flouro before, can't really afford it. Only reason I have braid is because of an Academy gift card my bossman gave me, otherwise I can't really afford braid either. Probably shoulda got some flouro with it too. Didn't think about it at the time I guess.

[Mike L]

Straight Braid for select presentation's 

Flouro or hybrid for everything else. 

 

 

 

Mike 

[Bluebasser86]

One of the lakes I fish for smallmouth has really clear water but I have no problems catching them on straight braid. Might make a difference to get a couple extra bites, but not enough for me to bother with tying a leader. Now if I was dragging bottom in the rocks and zebra mussels I would for the abrasion resistance. 

[GrumpyOlPhartte]

All this stuff is w-a-a-a-y too techie for me. Except for frogging, jigging, and finesse fishing my comfort line/leader combo is 30-pound braid with 12/15-pound fluorocarbon leader. Don't know about bass vision and deduction capabilities, but I fish from a kayak and when I get snagged, I'd rather try to break off the leader than the braid. After having to cut many feet of braid to free a snag, I adopted the aforementioned combo. Besides, if I want to switch to a jig I just clip off the leader and tie on a jig. (Dang! I sound so amateurish!)

[lmbfisherman]

I think it is all in ones' head, what they are confident in.  I've caught bass with yellow straight braid and white, while confidence is more important...what I think what matters most is how the line presents the lure in my opinion.  For example straight braid would take more focus walking the dog if you didn't have the proper slack and jerked too quickly.  While if you had a mono leader the action would be easier to present.  Another example when I was fishing a pike tourney in May, I had steel leaders.  I wasn't getting bites anywhere all morning.  As soon as I removed the leader I started landing pike.  In this example I was using a Berkley Cutter 110+.  I think the steel leader just made the action the pike didn't want that morning.  I've caught them before with steel leaders no problem.  At least this is what I think happens, the line makes a difference in lure action in my humble opinion. 

[fishindad]

On 8/1/2017 at 9:13 PM, HookRz said:

look, I don't want to break the news there is no Santa to anyone, but job one for these pros is to sell stuff. That's what buys them their beans. Make no mistake about that.

I respectfully disagree in the sense any professional athlete in any sport needs to step into the winner's circle in order to attract and, maintain sponsors. If these guys (and gals) aren't catching fish and placing in the money on a consistent basis, their sponsorship dollars shrink or disappear. Same with golf, tennis, whatever. In know this is getting off topic but I've been thinking about team9nine's original query (with apologies to T9 for the long post).

 

You better believe these pros are ultra competitive and want to win more than anything. And not just to satisfy their sponsors. I guarantee they will do just about anything to win short of cheating. Look at how fast dropshotting, spybaiting, Neko rigging, just to name a few recent examples, took off with the pros. If tying on a used Cuban cigar on 25 lb. mono was the new deal you better believe these guys will be on it. So was Seth (and Jason Christie) telling the truth or were they just saying those things to sell sponsor product? These pros are so dialed in and have presentations absolutely mastered down to the finest detail - they better or they don't make the cut. I would bet Feider has fished jigs using straight braid, straight fluoro, mono, braid with fluoro/mono enough that he knows having a 3 foot leader of 20 lb fluoro with that jig was the deal that day. Whether you or I want to believe that or accept that is up to us. To me, Seth is like a young AMart, always thinking outside the box and so in tune with the fish and their presentations. Whatever his rationale was who's to say but I will bet a lot of pros are paying real close attention to what he is doing out there. He and Aaron are somewhat anomalies in that they aren't the prototypical "Southern boys" - nor is Ike or Brandon P. for that matter. And it's great for the sport, especially since I live North of the Mason-Dixon line, lol.

 

Me personally, I don't really care nor do I think worrying about such details will make that much difference, to me, in a day's fishing. Just like most of us I do what works for me and what gives me the most confidence given the limited time on the water. Sure, if I fished for a living I would definitely experiment all the time with such details because it most certainly can and would make a difference between cashing a check or not. Where I fish there are tons of muskies and I've lost plenty of $$$ jerkbaits to bite-offs that I always have a fluoro leader. And still get bit off (yes, I know the diff between a bite-off and a knot failure). There's no one single perfect line choice but we all know enough that there's usually a perfect line choice or combination of lines for our own personal bass fishing situations.

[TOXIC]

Back on topic.....  Straight braid for me.  I have fished a crystal clear marl bottomed chain of lakes in Wisconsin for 20 years and Lake St Clair for 15 years straight.  My problem with a leader is that you are adding another failure point.  I don't like to tempt fate.  I usually lose.  

[riverbasser]

I dont use any leader unless I'm fishing a C-rig. Either straight braid, fluro or mono. I use all 3. Does fluro help me get bites I wouldnt on braid? I have no clue but I use it anyway unless I'm fishing thick vegetation. I spool about 50 yards of fluro on my reels at a time with mono underneath and I do the same with braid. Cost is about 4 bucks difference doing it this way.

[S Hovanec]

Don't know the situation, but here's a little experiment I did a few years ago.  I fished 2 identical setups on Erie, one with straight braid and one with braid and a 6# floro leader.  The only bites I got were on the rod with leader.

[Rick Howard]

I don't get it...  Why use the braid at all?

[Choporoz]

4 minutes ago, Rick Howard said:

I don't get it...  Why use the braid at all?

manageability (no coils), durability, casting distance, sensitivity, visibility, cost, low maintenance

 

 

YMMV on any one of those points, but collectively....well, hard to argue against most anyone using it for some applications

[Tim Kelly]

2 hours ago, TOXIC said:

Back on topic.....  Straight braid for me.  I have fished a crystal clear marl bottomed chain of lakes in Wisconsin for 20 years and Lake St Clair for 15 years straight.  My problem with a leader is that you are adding another failure point.  I don't like to tempt fate.  I usually lose.  

If you have no zebra mussels that approach is fine, but if they are present braid gets sliced too easily.

[J Francho]

1 minute ago, Tim Kelly said:

If you have no zebra mussels that approach is fine, but if they are present braid gets sliced too easily.

 

Cayuga Lake: where the zebes grow ON THE MILFOIL!

[A-Jay]

18 minutes ago, J Francho said:

 

Cayuga Lake: where the zebes grow ON THE MILFOIL!

 

See now ~ That's just a really Dirty Trick right there ~ 

So is that when you braid the Fluoro & Braid mainline together ?

A-Jay

[J Francho]

15# CXX works fine.  Retie often.  Don't whine about the memory.

[fishindad]

26 minutes ago, J Francho said:

15# CXX works fine.  Retie often.  Don't whine about the memory.

John, I only know you through your posts and replies on BFHP and you come across as someone who doesn't whine about much of anything ? 

[HookRz]

8 hours ago, fishindad said:

I respectfully disagree in the sense any professional athlete in any sport needs to step into the winner's circle in order to attract and, maintain sponsors. If these guys (and gals) aren't catching fish and placing in the money on a consistent basis, their sponsorship dollars shrink or disappear. Same with golf, tennis, whatever. In know this is getting off topic but I've been thinking about team9nine's original query (with apologies to T9 for the long post).

 

You better believe these pros are ultra competitive and want to win more than anything. And not just to satisfy their sponsors. I guarantee they will do just about anything to win short of cheating. Look at how fast dropshotting, spybaiting, Neko rigging, just to name a few recent examples, took off with the pros. If tying on a used Cuban cigar on 25 lb. mono was the new deal you better believe these guys will be on it. So was Seth (and Jason Christie) telling the truth or were they just saying those things to sell sponsor product? These pros are so dialed in and have presentations absolutely mastered down to the finest detail - they better or they don't make the cut. I would bet Feider has fished jigs using straight braid, straight fluoro, mono, braid with fluoro/mono enough that he knows having a 3 foot leader of 20 lb fluoro with that jig was the deal that day. Whether you or I want to believe that or accept that is up to us. To me, Seth is like a young AMart, always thinking outside the box and so in tune with the fish and their presentations. Whatever his rationale was who's to say but I will bet a lot of pros are paying real close attention to what he is doing out there. He and Aaron are somewhat anomalies in that they aren't the prototypical "Southern boys" - nor is Ike or Brandon P. for that matter. And it's great for the sport, especially since I live North of the Mason-Dixon line, lol.

 

Me personally, I don't really care nor do I think worrying about such details will make that much difference, to me, in a day's fishing. Just like most of us I do what works for me and what gives me the most confidence given the limited time on the water. Sure, if I fished for a living I would definitely experiment all the time with such details because it most certainly can and would make a difference between cashing a check or not. Where I fish there are tons of muskies and I've lost plenty of $$$ jerkbaits to bite-offs that I always have a fluoro leader. And still get bit off (yes, I know the diff between a bite-off and a knot failure). There's no one single perfect line choice but we all know enough that there's usually a perfect line choice or combination of lines for our own personal bass fishing situations.

You have a right to your opinion but I wouldn't cal fishing sales persons athletes. Know any? They live on sponsor salary, not winnings. Examine their contracts. 

[J Francho]

16 hours ago, fishindad said:

John, I only know you through your posts and replies on BFHP and you come across as someone who doesn't whine about much of anything ? 

 

What's BFHP?  And I whine about anything, lol.

[Hurricane]

I have given up on braid... I really don't need it for the waters I fish anyway...

[bowhunter63]

15 minutes ago, Chris. said:

I have given up on braid... I really don't need it for the waters I fish anyway...

x2

[Hurricane]

Just now, bowhunter63 said:

x2

Its more of a pain in the ass....

[Rick Howard]

17 hours ago, Choporoz said:

manageability (no coils), durability, casting distance, sensitivity, visibility, cost, low maintenance

 

 

YMMV on any one of those points, but collectively....well, hard to argue against most anyone using it for some applications

My thinking was that if you tie floro to braid you only increase your chances of knot failure by adding more knots.  Also it seems you would lose the sensitivity of braid by tying the floro to it?  

 

To me its a one of the other type of thing.  But then again, I am not betting my mortgage on fishing lol.  I don't spend nearly as much time figuring this stuff out as I would if it was my source of income.  That said, I do think we tend to over think this stuff a little