Braided Fishing Line or Monofilament

For as long as I can remember, I have used Stren brand fishing line when fishing for bluegill, crappie, and bass. So when I decided to try carp fishing last summer I purchased the heaviest Stren fishing line I could find locally, which happened to be a 300 yard roll of 14 pound test monofilament at K-Mart.



Photo credit: Amazon.com

That worked fine for my first few trips to local carp fishing spots at Ford Lake, Belleville Lake and the Huron River near Ann Arbor. But as my familiarity with carp fishing increased and I actually started getting bites, runs and landing a few carp in the 10 - 12 pound range I decided a change was in order.

For every carp I landed, I probably had at least 2 or 3 break offs. I had a very good trip to Ann Arbor where I was catching carp left and right, but my day would have been so much better if I had landed the ones which broke off before I got them to the bank.

I suspected my knots were the weak point at first, but after concentrating on tying the Palomar knot with purpose I realized that I wasn't losing fish to weak knots. I was losing them to abrasions and snags. Fish are actually pretty smart once they are hooked. They head to the nearest available cover in an attempt to "get away" and that usually takes them over some rough patches hidden to the eye. Submerged tree branches, tree stumps, rocks, boulders, concrete, etc. are likely candidates depending on the body of water. Many of those submerged obstacles are covered with zebra mussels, which will slice through monofilament fishing line like butter.

A fishing buddy suggested that I try spooling my reels with Power Pro braided fishing line to remedy the problem. I headed to Dick's Sporting Goods and purchased 300 yards of 50 pound line.



Photo credit: Amazon.com

It's available in the "slick" or the standard.

Photo credit: Amazon.com

I loaded two my reels with braided line and left one with the monofilament as a test comparison. Since that time I have had a lot fewer break offs and lost fish. I can't say it's entirely a result of the braided line though because I have caught an equal amount of fish on the inexpensive monofilament.

It could be that now I have a little more experience fighting the carp, my skills have improved, and I'm not "man handling" the fish as much causing stress on the line and contributing to the breaks myself.

At any rate, the braided line hasn't hurt anything either. In fact, over the winter I am going to spool my reels with some fresh Power Pro. I found it on sale yesterday for a buy one, get one 50% off at Dick's. They only had two packets of the green 50 pound left on the shelf or I would have picked up a few more packs. I'll stick to the standard stuff for now.

And I'll offer this disclaimer for anyone who reads this and feels that I am endorsing one brand over another...My personal best common carp (17.0 pounds) was actually caught on monofilament. It's the fish in the header photo at the top of this blog page.

Here's a picture of another nice fish I caught at the Detroit River in October; also on monofilament.

Detroit River common carp