Bush 'n Beach Fishing Magazine Location reports & tips for fishing, boating, camping, kayaking, 4WDing in Queensland and Northern NSW
Over the past couple of months, I’ve gone back to using mono line.
For many of us, braided line has been the preferred way, but I’ve recently noticed that I’ve been catching a lot more fish on monofilament line.
In this article, I want to run through a few of the different things I’ve been trying when using monofilament.
As a kid, my very first fishing rod was an Alvey with 15lb monofilament line.
That was over 40 years ago, when braid wasn’t around.
I had no trouble catching fish on it and it seemed to be very effective.
For a recent snapper fishing competition we’d entered, I decided to take my 7’6 Wilson Live Fibre snapper rod and Shimano Tekota reel loaded with 300m of 15lb mono – to see how it compared with my other rigs loaded with braided line.
The results were outstanding, with the first four fish to come onto the boat having taken the rod with mono line first – my fishing partner Brad was amazed.
One of them was an awesome 7kg knobby snapper and the 15oz line held up just fine with no leader.
I had a running luminescent 1/2oz egg sinker straight down to a set of two ganged Gamakatsu SL12S 6/0 hooks with a swivel in the eye of the top hook.
We continued to catch quality fish on this rig and managed to take out third place in the competition.
This enticed me enough to continue fishing with this rig and once again it proved it’s point.
On the next fishing trip to the 36-fathom reef off the Gold Coast, the snapper had no hesitation in hitting the mono line before any of the rigs using braid.
I had considered 15lb line to be too light for deep-water fishing in the past, but it seemed to be extremely resilient.
This was tested on the last bait dropped during that trip.
