Quote:
Originally Posted by Gasper Master
what you have to understand is that with Braid, you can tighten your drag down and horse that fish in.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jchief
Yes and no. LOL
Just be sure your rod is made to take the stress of locking down braid.
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We use Ugly Stiks and they've held up well. Never broke one on a fish or a snag. We've had several points of failure when using braid and horsing in fish that have lead us only to do this when the fish approaches structure or we're willing to risk losing the fish due to other factors making the landing time sensitive. Some failures we've seen:
1. Weak spots in the line can occasionally develop and go unnoticed.
2. We've had snap swivels fail. Big ones.
3. We've had 80 lb fluorocarbon leaders fail. Now we retie all knots before every trip.
4. We've pulled hooks from fish's mouths. Sometimes they just aren't hooked up that well and the hook-mouth connection is the weak link.
5. Since the reel/line are on the bottom, the line can break from abrasion if the fish pulls the rod down and it contacts the side of the boat.
I've also noticed that women and children just can't horse in a fish like most grown men can. They are also more susceptible to letting the rod/line make contact with the side of the boat.
We try and let an angler hooked into a big fish take their time and play the fish. Other than structure, the most common need to horse them in is multiple hook ups. If fish get tangled with each other, most or all of them are likely to get lost, so we try and get some of them to the boat quickly, even at greater risk of breaking off. 30 lb power pro is really not the best for this, and we've broken off a lot of fish horsing them in on multiple hook ups. 50 lb pp is really much much better for horsing in bull redfish, especially in passes and channels where the fish has a strong current helping them out.