I am in Cabo for 2 weeks, and have been surf fishing every morning for 3-4 hours...less lately because of the problems I am having.
1st rod is setup with a Penn Torque II spinning reel on a Penn 12' rod. Reel has 65 pound PowerPro braid, and I have been switching off using this rod with an other depending on the weight of the lure I am throwing. For 3 days of use...flawless. Then one morning I started getting knotted loops as I was casting...massive knotted loops. I have been throwing either a 3 or 4 ounce Robertson Ranger on this rig, and things got so bad that I had to peel off over 100 yards on line until a knotted loop developed at the end of a 350' cast...and that was the end of that rig to be able to be used.
2nd rod setup is a Diawa Saltista 6500H spinning reel on a Penn 10' rod with 40 pound PowerPro braid. Using this rig to throw 1.5 - 3 ounce lures. Same scenario initially...things were going flawless...caught 2 Dorado on consecutive casts 1 morning until the line started breaking when casting. Not talking about the knot coming undone...talking about made a cast, lure is in flight, and then poof the line breaks while in the air before the lure even hits the water. To make a long story short I have lost almost $200 worth of lures because of the line just breaking. This morning I was reeling in a top water, and the lure was about 15' from sure and poof...the line breaks. I could see the lure floating in the surf with braid still tied to it. When I look at the line after reeling it in the end of the line does not have a clean cut/break...almost looks like the line broke from exceeding the strength of the line.
Now in both cases I am putting a lot of ass into getting the lures out to where the fish are. In both cases I am using fluorocarbon leaders to handle the shock.
So I have a few questions...
Does braided line degrade with saltwater use?
What would all of a sudden start to cause knotting in braided line on a spinning reel when it was fine for a few days before?
Why would 40 pound braid start to break off randomly but was fine for almost a week before? I checked for nicks on the spool, bail arm, guides, etc. and everything is nice and smooth.
Just bad spools of PowerPro?
Any ideas or input would be appreciated...