Although companies have tried for years to educate the public that our fishing line is our only direct link between angler and fish — with the knot being the weakest link — I would venture to say that many anglers don’t think much about their line until it fails them.
Put that line in direct contact with some of the gnarliest cover Louisiana has to offer in the form of broken marsh pushed into a stand of roseau cane, and you can imagine that fishing line might fail quite frequently.
That’s where braided line comes in.
For anglers who want to spool up their reels and forget about it, braided line has the remarkable ability to sustain its strength no matter what we throw at it.
Capt. Travis Miller hopped on the braided-line bandwagon not too long ago. I remember fishing with Miller down at Bayou Dularge a couple winters ago and listening to him tout the reasons he was fishing light monofilament for speckled trout in the back of a dead-end canal.
His opinion has changed.
“I knew redfish wouldn’t shy away from braided line, but I learned over time that the trout didn’t care much whether I was fishing mono or braid, either,” said Miller. “Throw in these bass we’ve been catching the last two or three years, and I’ve gone to fishing braided line all the time.”
Miller, who prefers to spool up with different FINS braided lines based on different situations, believes these bass hiding under mats of vegetation, broken marsh and roseau cane dictate more of a vertical presentation.
“That means my line is going to be rubbing up against and scraping stuff all day long,” he said. “Where mono would quickly nick and create an even weaker point in my line, braided line stands up to the abuse without so much as a scratch.”
