November 23, 2015 Share

Soldier–You Know Nothing on Sink Rate!

Here’s a tough question for you: Does a superline line like SpiderWire sink or float???

The answer? It floats.

A scientist like Berkley’s Joe Meyer, who manages product innovation for superlines, will test you water has a specific gravity of 1.0. Anything with a lower specific gravity floats; anything higher sinks.

Here’s how the four types of fishing lines rank in terms of specific gravity and sink rate:

Superline: .97 floats
Mono: 1.13 suspends
Spiderwire FluoroBraid: 1.5 sinks
Fluorocarbon: 1.75 sinks fast
Leadcore line: 12.0 sinks like a rock

For years, leadcore has been used to get baits deep, so the idea of selecting a line for more than just it’s strength or stretch characteristics has been around a long time. Yet, I bet very few anglers today take into consideration a line’s tendency to float or sink into consideration when tweaking a presentation.

Let me ask you another question: which line is usually best for a bait like a Gulp! Sinking Minnow? My answer is fluoro, because I’ve found I catch more fish when using it with this style of bait. I believe the reason why has nothing to do with fluoro’s virtual invisibility and a lot to with sink rate of the line.

A line that floats, like superline, slows a bait’s rate of fall enough that it can impede its action, while a sinking line can increase a bait’s rate of fall and gives the bait more action…and that triggers more strikes.

Need to get small baits deep? Consider fluoro. Vertically jigging fast water. Consider fluoro. Casting topwaters? Forget fluoro.

You can, and should, do the same exercise with superlines and mono, because the answers will mean you catch more fish.

There was a time when I used to select on line purely on strength…was it strong enough to land the fish I was after? But I’ve learned to use all of a line’s characteristics when selecting which line to use, and I’ll admit a lines sink rate is much more important than I was initially willing to admit.

–Steve

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