Power Pro

[rps]

With all do respect F & F I can walk out 50 yards + or - and reel it back on without any fuss or burning any gas.

4/15 will give you better control and safety Drew. 10/2 is so thin that if it gets scratched it breaks.

I troll 10/2 PP through timber for large walleye. It does not fray or weaken as easily as some believe.

[fishinSWMO]

Just watch where you tie that skinny braid on, some hooks or jigs have the slightest little gap and the knot has pulled thru. Or it always wants to hide itself in some splitrings if you get a crankbait fouled up on your rod tip.

[RSBreth]

^{here is my opinon. I have done the braid, co polymers, flouro thing. Just get some Big Game Trilene and use what pound test you want for the conditions. You will never worry about respooling(the cost factor) and I bet you catch just as many fish. I am just saying.}

Big Game is horrible on spinning reels. Been there, done that.

[kirbydog]

I don't use the yellow-getting older but I still have decent vision and the yellow just seems unatural. For a leader I generally go with a fluro (Yozuri Hybrid which is actually fluro coated and not a true 100% fluro). A uni to uni knot works fine.

I use the suffix 832 in green but just got two spools in their ghost color and I'm gonna try that as soon as I need to respool one of my reels.

Braid is a funny thing, some guys love it (I do) some guys hate it. I've started throwing my deep cranks on braid and one nice thing is you rarely lose a crank to a snag. And I figure that deep, fish can't really see the line anyway. Plus I get longer casts with 15 or 20 lb braid than mono or fluro.

[Stoneroller]

Just watch where you tie that skinny braid on, some hooks or jigs have the slightest little gap and the knot has pulled thru. Or it always wants to hide itself in some splitrings if you get a crankbait fouled up on your rod tip.

the way to keep your braid from getting jacked up in a split ring is to make sure you are tying to the section of the split ring that isn't doubled over. use a palomar knot and make sure you pull it tight and you will rarely have an issue with the spit ring eating your line or knot.

as for sloppy hook/lure eyes. I will tie a knot with some 30lb braid, cut the knot free so it's on the eye and slide it around to block the gap. If this doesn't work, give that lure or hook to a friend. =)

[Mitch f]

I guess it shows that it's just a matter of personal taste. Like solo canoe versus kayak. Compelling arguments can be made for both sides. I'll stick with my Yozuri Hybrid

[drew03cmc]

Thanks Wayne. I may go that route then. Rarely do I fish crystal clear waters, but when I do, I will probably put a leader on.

Randy, I am not the one to debate light line tactics with. I love light lines and can land any fish quickly and without undue stress on them.

[RSBreth]

Randy, I am not the one to debate light line tactics with. I love light lines and can land any fish quickly and without undue stress on them.

You must be a better fisherman than I am then. I've never been able to land a 5 pound Smallmouth quickly on light line.,

[Al Agnew]

Wow, lots of things to be curmudgeonly about here...

Line twist is simply inherent to spinning reels. It's like pulling a hose off a hose reel sideways, it comes off twisted. You can minimize twist if you do everything right, but you can never eliminate it. Lots of lures can cause twist, especially any lure that you cast out, work for a few feet, and then reel in quickly for the next cast. Pop-R type poppers are bad about this. Fluke type baits can be bad. Even tubes if they aren't rigged just right. Doing ANY reeling against a slipping drag will twist your line terribly. But just using spinning tackle, due to the fact that the line comes off the spool sideways, will eventually build up twist.

Any kind of mono or fluoro will be affected by twist. Braid, not much. So I use braid.

I've never figured out how closing the bail by hand does a lot. The whole reason you get snarls is because you close the bail on a loop of line. How does closing the bail by hand automatically help that? The only way to stop it is to do what somebody above said and give your line a tug after closing the bail but before beginning the retrieve. Or, if you have a fairly resistant lure, just lift your rod tip sharply to remove that loop.

All that stuff is why I don't use spinning tackle all that much. I like it for using the slow, bottom bumping stuff, because you don't have to start the retrieve immediately and can do stuff like closing the bail by hand and giving the line a tug. But that doesn't work very well if you're using a lot of faster retrieve lures. And I use it for fluke type baits just because I can skip them with spinning tackle. But geez, why use it when baitcasting is so much simpler?

I've never used a leader with braid. I don't use heavy braid, 2/10 or 4/15 most of the time. I seem to catch plenty of fish on it and I can break it if I need to. I don't have a whole lot of problems with abrasion weakening it, but what I have found is that you need to use no heavier power than a medium rod, and medium light is better. A sharp, hard hookset will break it especially if you are using a fairly heavy power rod. Point is, though, that the diameter of 2/10 or 4/15 braid is thin enough that it shouldn't be very obvious to the fish, and tying on a leader is just one more knot to possibly go wrong. If you are concerned about a line like PP bleaching out to almost white and really showing up, consider two things. One, if you are using topwater lures or other lures that run high in the water column, a very light colored line is probably not going to show up much to the fish because they are seeing it against a very light background of sky and sunlight. It's very visible to you because you're looking at it, with the light hitting it, against the dark background of the water. Two, if you are using it with bottom hugging lures where the fish will be looking down at it and seeing it against the bottom of the river, just find a brown or green magic marker and re-color the last few feet of it.

Most, if not all, the EWG worm hooks I've ever used have enough of a gap in the eye that 2/10 or 4/15 Power Pro will slip through it. One company at least makes hooks for braid that have an extra solid ring attached to the hook eye to combat that. If I'm not using one of those hooks, I'll tie a double palomar knot, so that there are four loops of line going through the eye of the hook instead of two. The knot is a bit of a pain to tie, but it seems to fix the problem.

[Al Agnew]

Oh, one more curmudgeonly thing...why the heck would you go to the trouble of tying on a weight and a swivel and dragging it behind the boat to remove twist? All you gotta do is let out a cast length of line behind the boat with nothing tied to it, and run down the lake a way with the motor or even the trolling motor. If you are on the river, find a long riffle and let out a cast length of line, letting the current carry it down the riffle until it straightens out, let it wave in the current for a bit, then reel it in slowly, running it between your thumb and forefinger.