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.