Is anyone trolling with cranks and boards using braided line? Any down side to using braid other than lack of stretch?
Printable View
Is anyone trolling with cranks and boards using braided line? Any down side to using braid other than lack of stretch?
Love braid, use it , no problem!
This topic has been discussed over and over here and OGF.Many guys use braid with inline boards and works fine for them.Main problem they have is the line slipping through the releases.That problem can be solved by using specific releases or wrapping.The consensus though is the catch rate is better with mono,inline boards and cranks.Braid will not beat mono in most situations.
I use to have trouble gauging depth with braid. After talking to some of the LEWT fishermen I switched to 10 lb mono and I have not looked back. it works for most everything I need it for. I think braid is overkill myself.
I am pretty new to this web site, and a newbie to trolling so I do not have access to the vast amount of previous posts on this subject, Bob. I was only looking for some insight if braided line was being used by others and if it was a viable option. Excuse me for asking a question I felt it was a valid question to ask on this web site.
A couple down sides not already mentioned:
Cost. Braid costs more.
Knots. Good braid knots are harder to tie and take more practice in the beginning. Because braid will slip and or cut itself.
Abrasion. Braid will wear easier than mono (it will look fuzzy) You have to watch it closely around cranks and the releases. The loss of only a couple of the spectra fibers will drastically reduce it's strength.
That said we prefer braid for the reason you first mentioned, the lack of stretch. We use releases with all our inline board and with braid a quick little pop will release the boards as long as you twist or wrap the release as Bob mentioned.
To each their own, both work well. Try them both and use what works best for you.
Rod 3262,sorry if I came across wrong on your question.There are no wrong questions to ask here.Just the ones you don't ask.When starting out or a veteran,we are all learning things here on these fishing websites.Keep reading and keep the questions coming.It has actually been quiet on this site,so welcomed the question.Braid is the best line to use on dipseys and most the charters use it with big boards and trutrip 40s divers.If just starting out and don't have enough rods yet,using braid is a viable option.
Howdy - we use braid with a 20-30' mono leader, so there's some stretch. Works great, and the board gets attached to the braid. I use braid, because these reels perform double duty for salmon fishing; and I don't feel like respooling them. Was using 30lb braid, but switching it to 50lb this year. We've ran some reels with mono and haven't seen any difference in catch rates, so standardizing all of our rods to the braid setup.
We use big boards rather than in-lines for one good reason (but I don't want to start an argument so I won't say why we are right and everyone using inlines are wrong - mostly.) We prefer braid with the big boards because it snaps out of the releases better when a fish bites or we need to pull it free. Precision Trolling Data does list dive depths for braid - (10 pound Fireline)Quote:
Originally Posted by Rod3262
I think lots of people, maybe most, troll with braided line. Someone made a good point about knots, but the Palomar knot is good. And easy to tie it to a snap or a snap swivel. I do not buy the expensive PowerPro for trolling (I do buy it for my spinning reels for casting). Amazon and even Cabelas sell some less expensive but still very good braided line. We seem to catch a lot of walleye. We don't have very many get off. We don't have to baby the line and don't change it nearly as often as we probably should, changing it only every few years (or longer.....), but it does not break off on us. We use 30 lb. If you are trolling crank baits, you may want to use a fluorocarbon leader. Or don't.... We usually pull worm harnesses and we just clip them to our snap swivel. Obviously for dipseys a mono or fluorocarbon leader is used behind the dipsey.
Biggest problem we have had is it slipping of the snap weights that snap onto line, and slipping when we use inline planer boards. But recently we switched from snap weights to just using an inline sinker we can clip on with a 3 foot or so mono leader behind it going to a snap swivel. That is easier and it does not seem to bother the fish at all. And no worry about slipping. If the walleye are biting at all, they are not hard to catch off Cleveland.
Have been using braid for some time without any issues. At one of the Niagara Falls Fishing Expo's I sat in a seminar where one of the Charter Capt.'s that was participating in the seminar said that he used braid on his downriggers. Thought about changing and made the move over to it. I found that it made it easier to detect those fish that get hooked and swim along. The only negative was with the rigger release that I was using which utilized a nylon/plastic pin that you rapped the line around. I had been using this type of release since the mid 1980's. The original one was called the Wil-Jer. What was occurring was the braided line was cutting a groove into the pin. After some research on rigger releases I switched over to a Black's release that has a steel pin on it which solved the problem.
We too have found the Blacks releases the only way to go for Walleye on our riggers. You can adjust them down for the light bite. There are some cheaper Blacks knock offs that work OK, but if in doubt stick with blacks.
We also have stuck with braid for our riggers. Not so much to show a light bite as the little 10 inchers don't do anything but drag along. We mainly use braid just to keep everything the same. We buy the large spools of 30# braid and just use it for everything. It comes in handy when you get hammered by a big farm animal in the shallow Western basin.
Has anyone ever pulled jet 40s with 10lb mono ?