Every skill requires tools. The artist has tiny brushes and brushes wider than the hand. The architect uses pencil leads of various thickness to trace lines along rulers, squares, shapes, and angles. The photographer carries a lens to match each purpose, a filter for every effect.

Line is a tool. Using the same line for every job is like an artist trying to do everything with one brush. Imagine painting details like buttons on a shirt with a brush bigger than your thumb, or laying on background colors with six horse hairs.

Imagine fighting trophy walleyes out of boulders in current with a soft line that nicks easily. Might get lucky once, even twice. But successful fishing, like other sports, is a matter of putting the percentages in your favor.

Techniques like line watching, practiced over time, become skills. Seeing the line jump or move on a strike is an advantage. The right tool for the job may be a high-vis line, but other considerations must always be factored in. In very clear, shallow water, high-vis may turn some walleyes away from a bait. Such judgments come with experience.

Good fishermen match high-vis characteristics to conditions. Dark, windy days may call for bright line. Bright fluorescent line jumps out against almost any background. All lines are not equal. In most instances, matching line characteristics to fishing conditions will make you more effective, make fishing more productive and pleasurable, and result in a better day on the water.

Traditional Line by Design
Nylon lines are designed to do specific things or to cover a range of applications. About ten basic nylon polymers offer properties considered desirable in monofilament fishing lines. Most lines are made of one (homopolymers) or two (copolymers) of these nylons.

The nylons are melted, then extruded through a dye, and stretched. The nylons in combination with the extrusion process determine line characteristics. Maxima, for instance, uses the same polymer in four different lines. Each line is different, though, because each is extruded differently.

Line choice is determined by technique. Open water trolling, the fastest-growing segment of the walleye world, is an example. Trolling lures behind planer boards, diver-planers, and downrigger balls demands that hooks set themselves. Rods are in holders, and if everything isn’t in sync, fish routinely escape. The system works best with low-stretch lines that can withstand shock.

Thin, high tensile-strength copolymers work well with certain systems, especially flatlining and trolling with small, in-line planer boards. But these lines are seldom abrasion resistant, nor are they very shock proof.

Thin lines cast well and also help you make the most of vertical presentations in current and wind. Smaller diameters mean less line is affected by moving air and water. Lighter jigs reach bottom quicker. Added tensile strength allows you to cut back on diameter while retaining the hooksetting power of thicker lines with the same pound test.

Abrasion-resistant lines withstand the stress and shock of trolling with things like Dipsy Divers and Fish Seekers. These lines stretch less than lines in most other categories. The primary function of these lines is to present baits and to haul heavy fish out of dense wood or rock cover.

Limp, castable lines have qualities you can’t get in tough abrasion-resistant monofilaments. With these lines, you can at times throw a lure 5 to 10 percent farther—important when casting jigs or lures along weedlines or reefs. Most fishermen also use such lines to present livebait. But most anglers prefer nick-proof line for presenting spinner rigs; limp line grooves where the clevis revolves on the line.

Most companies offer an all-purpose line with some abrasion resistance and some supple characteristics as well. Might seem like the answer to all your problems. And for most fishermen, these lines perform well in all but the most extreme conditions. Technicians, though, do better with lines designed for specific purposes.

Sometimes you must sacrifice one line characteristic and make do. In very cold weather, low stretch, thin diameter, high tensile-strength lines become wiry. Abrasion-resistant lines develop coil memory. You need limp line, even for working cover.

Remove the tail-end section of line often throughout a day of fishing. And respool frequently.

The Chain Concept

Everything in the chain, from the point of the hook to the butt of the rod, has to work together. A 6-pound line on a rod rated for 12- to 17-pound test is a weak link. You’ll get by when walleyes are under 3 pounds. Hook an 8 or 10, and you’re in trouble.

Match your line to the job, then match rods, reels, hooks, and lures to the line. If walleyes are active near bottom on the edge of a huge mudflat 30 feet down, you might troll the area, using spinner rigs on crawler harnesses behind 3-ounce bottom bouncers.

This isn’t a finesse situation. Use 12- or 14-pound test on a casting reel. Seventeen’s starting to get just too thick to easily keep the rig down. The leader can be 10- or 12-pound test. The main line also determines hook sturdiness. Hooks should be heavy-gauge steel to withstand 12-pound line.

Line’s part of a system. What systems will you use this year? Eventually you’ll want line spooled and marked and ready to handle those systems. If most of your fishing is with livebait rigs coupled with light sinkers or with jigs around clean bottom, a limp 6- or 8-pound rather than a stiff abrasion-resistant line may bring more fish to the bait.

If you’re casting to shallow cover, line color is important. Fluorescent lines let you see more strikes. But if you’re on spooky fish in clear water, maybe go low-vis in smoke gray or green. Will you be making lots of long-distance casts? A supple castable line will get you 10, even 15 feet more on each cast—if your spool’s full and the line’s fresh.

Monofilament is the last thing you should have to worry about when walleye fishing. And you won’t have to worry if you do your homework before you leave the dock.


Evolution of Lines
After years of creeping along at impulse speed, line makers suddenly kicked into warp speed and leapt forward into hyperspace, leaving old line concepts spinning in their confused and turbulent wake.

The next generation of fishing lines has arrived, complete with new technology, terminology, and psychology of use. It’s difficult, however, to choose and apply new lines properly without background information on recent changes.

Fluorocarbon Lines
The recent introduction of fluorocarbon lines and leaders for minimizing visibility in ultraclear saltwater conditions is beginning to carry over into the freshwater market. Because of their cost, early versions were limited to small spools of leader material noted for being tough, invisible, and a bit on the stiff side. In 1999, both Stren and Berkley offered consumers full-spool fluorocarbon lines for the first time.

When tying knots with fluorocarbon lines, wet both your line and hookeye, then slowly draw the knot tight to minimize heat buildup, which might damage the line. Fluorocarbon has about the same stretch as nylon line, but is denser—good for keeping light jigs on bottom.

Superlines
Original no-stretch or low-stretch superlines were gel-spun polyethylene braids made from Spectra or other space-age fibers. They boasted high tensile strength and minimal stretch, combined durability and performance, and possessed diameters a fraction of the thickness of equivalent mono lines. Sounds like the best of all worlds, especially where light line finesse presentations excel for fussy fish. But the initial claims triggering I-can’t-wait-to-try-it sales did not result in the abandonment of traditional monofilament line. Braided superlines weren’t necessarily too good to be true; instead, they required much more adaptation than most anglers expected.

The braiding technology used to weave superlines was slow and expensive: $20 for a 100-yard spool wasn’t unusual. Lines proved so thin that knots were difficult to tie.

Many knots failed; anglers generally accepted the palomar knot as most effective. With superline’s minor inherent stretch, anglers using traditional rod tip movements overworked lures and broke line or ripped the hook from a fish’s mouth on the hookset. Skinny lines also buried into casting reel spools on the hookset or became caught behind revolving spools that had been designed to accommodate thicker diameter lines.

In effect, braided superlines required adjustment and a period of orientation to use properly. Many anglers who tried braided superlines experienced various difficulties and returned to mono because it offered them a better all-around blend of fishable properties.

Fused superlines entered the market in mid-1995. They’re a bit thicker than the original braided superlines, but much easier to handle. Formed by fusing a bundle of super fibers rather than braiding them, fused lines are cheaper and quicker to manufacture, and they behave more like monofilament.

Most knots are easy to tie, and the line feels and acts like thin mono instead of some unfamiliar and intimidating fibrous braid. Yet there’s very little stretch—perhaps 3 percent, compared to 20 percent with monofilament—which puts performance back in the super category.

In essence, you’re dealing with a hybrid product that teams some of the best features of both. Not problem free, but certainly more familiar and less imposing to use. Fused superline offers a faster learning curve for achieving an acceptable level of comfort and confidence. Use a softer rod, a more subtle rod tip motion, and a looser drag setting to move up to super performance.

Among fused superlines, SpiderWire Fusion and Berkley FireLine dominated the early introductions of mid-1995. Walleye anglers initially applied the new fused superlines to big water trolling and deep water applications with noteworthy success. Clearly, fused superlines helped rejuvenate confidence in the entire spectrum of superlines, leading anglers to experiment with other applications.

If you’re going to try superlines, begin with one of the fused ones—they’re easier to handle. Then, for ultrafinesse and ultrathin technology, try a superbraid.

Braid Evolution
The superbraids, composed of thin polyethylene fibers with much stronger strength-to-thickness ratios than nylon monofilaments, are available in original sleeve-like (hollow), and flat versions like Berkley’s Gorilla Braid, or fused versions like FireLine. A lot of fishermen are still asking, “Why have both?” and, “Which should I buy?”

Fused lines were developed to satisfy the demand for a braid that fishes more like mono and doesn’t unbraid as easily. Fused lines tend to be less shock resistant and slightly weaker.

All this, yet some of the best anglers we know still contend they could fish without difficulty today with the same premium lines they used in 1980—say, with Berkley XL or original Stren. On the other hand, some of the best anglers we know fish braids about 80 percent of the time. There’s little question the fishing world has moved a long way toward solving many of the specific problems anglers face in dealing with the common problem of connecting directly to the fish. Superlines definitely require anglers to make adjustments, but the lines allow you to accomplish things you can’t do with mono.