Maybe it’s a bloke thing in the fishing world with how a percentage of anglers seem to enjoy telling other anglers exactly how to do things. You have to use this length of rod, so and so spinning reel is too heavy/light/grindy/smooth, an acute angle on a paddletail is required for more lure action - bless! - and of course the whole leader or no leader debate………….
I like using a leader on the end of my braid for a few different reasons, and ever since I learnt how to properly tie the FG knot a good number of years ago now, my braid to leader junction is categorically not a weak point in my setup. You may or may not like fishing with a mono or fluorocarbon leader on the end of your own braid (or whatever mainline you like to lure fish with), but if you do use a leader and you worry at all about the join between braid and leader then to me there is a very easy answer - learn how to tie the FG knot and then use this and nothing else. Forget the relative size or power of whatever fish you might be chasing - the FG knot is a modern fishing knot that is stronger than the Albright, Improved Albright, Uni to Uni etc. It just is, and in my mind anybody who claims otherwise hasn’t learnt how to or simply can’t tie the FG knot. Why anybody wouldn’t want to maximise the potential of their often very expensive mainline is beyond me, but then as per my first paragraph I am not here to tell you what to do. Except for learn how to tie the FG knot IF you use a leader. Embrace the hypocrite!
But you might not like fishing with a leader. I was very interested to see that the two lads I mainly fished with over in Guernsey the other day both do not fish with leaders on the end of their braid. For all my own liking the use of a leader, I can’t argue against these lads not doing so themselves because they catch a hell of a lot of bass over some incredibly rough ground, and they both believe that not using a leader results in more bass landed. I was standing almost next to Roger when he hooked and landed the bass below, and that fish went around a rock in front of him yet he still managed to drag the fish back around and to his waiting hands. I can see both sides of the argument here but when I think about it I personally still feel more comfortable using a short length of fluorocarbon on the end of my braid mainline. As I said above, “yet another knot which has to be a weak point” as some anglers might worry about is categorically not a weakness if you tie proper - FG - leader knots.
But these guys do rather well not using leaders. Both lads use darker coloured braids direct to a lure clip, and if you know the Channel Islands at all you will know all about how incredibly clear the water tends to be. With the amount of bass these two anglers catch I would suggest that bass are not shying away from their end gear due to them not using a length of clear line in front of their lures. I have very strong memories of mullet shying away from fluorocarbon leaders in very bright sunshine but not from that dark brown Daiwa Sensor mono for example. I tend to prefer a bright coloured braid so I am drawn to a clear bit of line before my business end as such, but Simon said he tried a white braid for a while and didn’t notice any drop in catch rates.
36lb Berkley Sick X8 braid in the white colour
As for the actual braids they use, Simon fishes with the Smoke colour Berkley Fireline in the 31lb breaking strain, and Roger was fishing with the 32lb Berkley Whiplash in the Moss Green colour when he dragged that bass out from behind a rock right next to me. Berkley Fireline especially is known for being one of the most abrasion resistant braids out there. Note that both anglers are fishing with somewhat heavier braids than what might be termed “normal” for UK and Irish bass fishing - gotta be 20lb, surely? I completely understand their arguments in favour of fishing with stronger braids - a bit thicker equals a bit more abrasion resistance - indeed I have been fishing for a good while now with the 36lb red and now the (newish) white coloured Berkley Sick X8 braid, plus the 30lb Sufix 131, and for the life of me I can’t notice any difference fishing with a heavier/thicker braid.
With how braids are measured and labelled I don’t happen to think that the 36lb Berkley Sick X8 braid is actually a “true” 36lb braid - whatever that actually means - and to me it feels more like say a good 25-30lb 8-strand braid. Whatever the case my lures are flying, I am not aware of any loss in distance, it cuts through the wind just fine, and I do feel a bit more confident with a slightly thicker braid in and around the snags especially. Might be very marginal which I accept, but what if marginal turns into one more big bass landed?
But I still like fishing with a leader, although when the bass season is fully underway I do intend to get hold of something like a 36lb dark green Berkley Sick X8 or perhaps splash the cash on some dark green 30lb Sufix 131, and try fishing for a while with the braid tied directly to my lure clip - no leader basically. I want to give it some proper watertime and see how it feels to fish like this. I can’t argue against it with how those two lads catch so many bass over so much truly gnarly ground, but I need to see for myself if I can find any benefits to it over my usual fluorocarbon leader based setup. If I get on okay like this then the next step will be to use this white colour 36lb Berkley Sick X8 which I am seriously liking, to see if I can get a sense of a white braid in clear water having any negative effects on my catch rates. I am interested to see how it might go but I am also aware that my use of a leader works just fine and I kinda like what I see as the various benefits. We shall see. This isn’t meant to be a can of worms, rather I can’t ignore it when I fish with very good anglers who are doing something different to me for reasons they can very logically explain and justify…………..
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