Some musings on braid color, and coloring braid. Thoughts?

[DrewFlu33]

Instead of derailing the other thread about braid with this, I figured it maybe deserved its own thread. Interested to hear what others think about it...

I've been really mulling over the obsession with braid colors, the fading of those colors, line visibility, and the steps people take to try and address all of the above. People are paying out the nose for the new Vicious no-fade braid, and by all accounts it works as advertised. You see a lot of guys carry big permanent markers (or the Fitzgerald braid paint if they're fancy) to darken up line which has become discolored. I totally understand why they're doing it, and I've even got a giant industrial permanent marker that I notched with an Xacto knife for exactly that purpose. Now I probably worry less about line visibility than many, mostly because I use a lot of fluoro leaders, but I definitely worry about line visibility in situations where I'm tying that braid directly to my bait. For me, that's mostly topwater stuff.

And for that topwater stuff - buzzbaits and frogs mostly as I tend to use a heavyish mono leader for walking baits and poppers to help avoid treble hooks grabbing my line - I've really started reconsidering the classic thought process. At best, I think color of line wouldn't matter at all and so we're wasting our time and money fighting with color fade: If a fish is looking up, whether the line is white, yellow, blue, black, or purple (to whatever extent the fish we chase can actually perceive color), they're likely just going to see a silhouette. The sun shines down from above of course, so unless you're fishing over a light bottom that reflects a bunch of light back towards the surface, a shadow is all you'll get. At worst, assuming a fish can see the color of our line when looking up at it and really does care, isn't using something dark green or coloring it black or painting it dark green just about the worst approach you can take? If anything, going with line that's blue or white seems like the best approach here. Heck, even yellow or light green seems like it would be preferred to something very dark. And given that we often buy braid that's dark green, wouldn't it make sense to leave it as-is once it's faded or even prefer to have our line faded for these presentations?

If we shift the discussion to subsurface presentations, I definitely defer to the conventional wisdom. Most everything in a bass's world is either green or brown or otherwise dark colored. In any case, the lighter colors (or faded darker colors) definitely seem like they stand out. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced this is the only time it makes sense to worry about our braid's color being faded.

As usual, I'm sure I'm giving the fish way too much credit. Nevertheless, as I'm dealing with the reality of my bass season coming to a close very soon and with ice fishing still pretty far off, I'm spending a lot of time just thinking about bass fishing. That can be dangerous...

[Jeff Hahn]

I have occasionally taken a marker and recolored my braid. But, I have yet to see it make any difference in the number of bites I get. Frankly, we over-think bass fishing way too much...they have a brain the size of a pea!

[VH5150]

Frankly, we over-think bass fishing way too much...they have a brain the size of a pea![/QUOTE]

No truer words have been written!

[Aric11]

I have a pretty straight forward thought process on line visibility:

- Reaction Strikes: Straight Braid. The idea is to make them bite out of reaction rather than preconceived thought.

- Finesse / Feeding Bites: If the bass are slow or need time to think about whether or not they will bite, I’m using Stright Copolymer or Floro, or Braid with a Leader.

Coloring my line in all situations I’ve proven (at least to myself) has Zero bearing on whether or not a Bass will react to Frog, Spinnerbait, Buzzbait, Jig etc. Crankbaits I use line with stretch as my main or a leader so I don’t tear the hooks out, but it’s still a reaction strike I’m looking for so the CoPoly/Floro being “invisible” is simply by default and a moot point for me.

As for line size, I downsize my line for the sole purpose of allowing me to get better action or acquire deeper depths (as is the case with crankbaits) and not because I believe it will make the line less visible and the bass more apt to react I bite.

To the contrary I’ve actually had situations where upsizing my line to a much heavier pound test allowed my baits to fall more slowly so I actually got more bites doing it when the fish were finicky. Like as was said before, we give bass far too much credit at times…

Thanks for starting this post, interesting topic for sure!

[TrackerPro16]

I used to pick colors that would blend in and be 'invisible' but experimented with a number of colors and found it made no difference with bites. I usually use floro or mono leader in 2'-4'. Now I pick the color I can see easily and don't worry about it. On some fishing I will tie direct to the bright colors and I still catch fish.

[Jfish]

Drew, I always like your posts, usually helpful and makes me think. For topwaters, I don't think it matters at all. Subsurface, I think in water with 1-2 feet of visibility it does not matter but after you go over that it probably does start to matter. Some of our highland lakes here in Arkansas, we will have 10-20 feet of visibility. I once heard Hank Parker say something to the effect that how much fish can detect line size was the big unknown (I am paraphrasing). I am assuming that he meant that he thinks that they can detect or become conditioned to the larger line sizes with their lateral line. Also, I have heard some of pros say that they feel the braided line makes a sawing type noise when fished in timber. I would assume that fish would become conditioned to this also over time. Just my .02 cents worth.

[Ben Danbleume]

I think line size has way more affect on fishing than color.

[Casslaw]

I think most of this is a marketing thing because of the bait monkey!

When I was a kid I swore by Trilelene XL, clear 10lb (in Florida, LOL!), then I went to 12lb Trilene XT in green...stayed that way for years except for when flipping and all the sudden rope would work.

I switced to saltwater fishing around 2006. Yes I’m lucky to be in the Tampa Bay Area where we get to choose specifically what we want to fish for and I switched to Power Pro, 20lb, green with a 3’ 30lb Seaguard leader. On those trips I ran out of leader material the ONLY fish that didn’t bite as well were snook in clear waters.

Now that braid has come so far I have dumbed it down, 30lb Suffix 832 on everything but the frog and flipping stix; which get 65lb. No leader, nothing.

Since June (when I got my boat) I’ve caught...4-6 bass over 8lbs and 2 over 10 and they all came on straight braid.

If there is enough wind to make the water ripple I don’t think it matters on a topwater, shallow crank, jerkbait, spinnerbait, frog, swim jig...hell I even go straight braid on my stand by soft plastic; a baby brush hog.

I say this with 2 exceptions...clear waters, which I don’t fish a lot of; I’m positive there are techniques in clear water that a small diameter flouro/co-poly will make a difference, and very heavily pressured fish.

Looking at lines from underwater, green is the color of most vegetation, whether it be light or dark. And, I fish IN weeds of all kinds very often. Not much open water hump fishing for me.

During the weekdays I fish the same small golf course pond for 1.5 hours every night, it is devoid of any weeds, just a rock wall and semi-clear water. I throw a different lure each day just to make sure I’m matching the rod & reel to that lure correctly. This week I have caught at least 2 fish per night out of this 5 acre pond on 7 different lures(I take 2 poles each night).

I dont like leaders because to stay at 30lb I’d have to go big diameter, which I believe is a more important factor than color, and another knot to fail isn’t a factor I want to introduce.

Just my .02 from a Florida guy. I definitely realize this wouldn’t work everywhere.

[jbrew73]

I think most agree that black lures are good for stained / muddy water. Supposedly the contrast is easier for fish to see. Why on God’s green earth would we color our line black ? And for that matter green pumpkin is one of the most popular colors for soft plastic and green is the most popular braid. I guess green line would attract bites?

Like stated above, we give fish too much credit.

[DrewFlu33]

Really good comments and thoughts all around.

The comment JFish makes is a really good one. I've never even considered it, but it's entirely possible that they can sense our line, and maybe that matters a whole lot more than the visibility.

Along those same lines (heh), when I took a pretty prolonged break from bass fishing and dove full on into fly fishing for trout, I learned a lot about line in that setting that I just never applied to bass fishing for whatever reason, mostly because I've always figured bass just don't care as much. Trout fishermen are really worried about line visibility, and for good reason I think - I've caught more trout on flies down to size 32 than I can count. They're almost comically small and I'd never believe it if I hadn't seen it done then done it myself. If a fish can see those, it can see the line too.

That wasn't the most important thing I learned then, though. Most of my fishing was done on a very high quality but heavily pressured stream. Full of trout and a lot of big ones at that, but they'd all seen a fly or 10 drift past them. Like everyone else, I always worried a lot about my line visibility for those trout so I used the thinnest line I could in most situations. These small size 20-32 flies would get 8x, 9x, or 10x tippet (10x has a breaking strength of 1 lb and a diameter of like 25 one-thousandths of an inch). The smaller you went, the more bites you got. You could fish through a stretch with 8x and they'd stop biting, then not change a thing besides going to 10x and catch a bunch more right through the same area. Reliably you could go down the stream behind someone catching one here and one there on some $4 fly while you were throwing something you whipped up in 30 seconds with nothing but a hook, thread, and a piece of feather and catch the fire out of them as long as you were using the right diameter line to present it as naturally as possible while Joe Blow was tying his Orvis Prince Nymph to 3x tippet.

Then fluorocarbon started coming out and my buddies and I got excited. We were just sure we were going to crush them and that we wouldn't need to use that crazy light line to do it anymore. Cutting off the long story, it turns out that our bites from using that light line had everything to do with how the line impacted the action of our flies. The best fly fisherman I know calls it "micro drag." Fluoro didn't make a difference at all except being more temperamental to tie knots with, and when the hook eyes and line are that small, that's actually a huge disadvantage. Of course the aforementioned best fly fisherman I know never strayed from old reliable, and he kept kicking our butts the whole time.

I suppose anyone that's ever cleaned a trout and found a bunch of sticks and rocks in its gullet has also stumbled up the same thing. It really doesn't matter (in most cases) what you're fishing with as long as it looks natural to them.

It's a stretch to say that fits in with the original intent of the thread, but interesting nonetheless I think. I suspect a big part of our worries with line may be founded in something real and having to do with the line, but I also bet it's more rooted in how that line makes our bait look in the water than it is in how the line itself looks. I guess maybe the ultimate test would be to round up some 1 lb braid and try it on those picky trout to see if that offered an improvement over the comparatively thick 1 lb mono, or maybe to try drop shotting with some super thin braid and no leader to see if you get more bites than with a more standard braid-to-leader setup.

As always I know I'm diving way too deep, but when it's the only way to scratch that fishing itch that's what happens.

[SoonerFan]

I read a long time ago, I believe it was in Doug Hannon's book, that bass don't recognize a broken line with 5 or 6 inches of differing colors as one solid line. In other words; if the line is black and white, the bass only sees black things and white things and don't relate them together.

I believe this is the theory behind Suffix's Camo braided line. I get the concept but the Suffix braid fades to a light yellowish tan color all the way up.