Line Choice—Day for Fluorocarbon
Originally Published on Jun 9, 2011 “From the Docks” NBC Sports
Yesterday, I taped a segment for North American Fisherman TV on a local bass lake with Greg Huff, who oversees the NAFC’s Facebook site.
The show concept was simple: We picked a lake at random (but looked good on paper) and asked Facebook fans of the NAFC (www.facebook.com/fishingclub) to provide suggested approaches to fish it. The advice received was solid. In fact, it was so good we incorporated it into our strategy and by day’s end had boated dozen’s of largemouth to 5 pounds.
The advice: fish soft baits like Berkley Heavyweight worms wacky style. And that’s just what Greg ended up doing after we found tons of bass holding along the deep weed edge.
Meanwhile, I transitioned to a Texas-rigged worm fished on 15-pound Stren 100% Fluorocarbon. Why fluoro? Because it offered a couple specific things:
Fluoro sinks. This allowed us to go with lighter bullet weights (3/32) and still get down to the fish without hanging up constantly in the weeds.
Fluoro Stretches slower than mono. This provides better sensitivity and better hook sets on long casts.
Majoring in minor matters? Not yesterday! Fluoro out-fished braid 4 to 1 even when we used the same bait, hook and retrieve (and added a fluoro leader). It was clear the swimming action we could achieve with fluoro was simply the best option yesterday.
Meanwhile Greg threw Heavyweight worms on NanoFil, which tends to ride up in the water column, staying out of trouble when fishing heavy cover like the milfoil/coontail mix we fished yesterday. It was the best choice for that method.
Selecting line based on presentation goals continues to be an area I am visiting constantly. Yesterday was an extreme case that pointed out how important line choice can be.
Steve
