Gear, Trout

Florocarbon vs Mono

There is an ongoing debate on what is better to use – fluorocarbon or mono.

Fluorocarbon offers the promise of being less visible to fish, since it’s index of refraction is the same as water.

Mono, however is tried and true and has been responsible for a large number of fish caught and landed.

Unfortunately the fishing industry is plagued by a lack of standardization, and fishing lines are no exception.  Different brands of line may be rated the same strength, but have different diameters, prices, abrasion resistances, stiffness and actual strength.  So it is extremely hard to do an apples to apples comparison between brands of the same type of line, let alone across different types of lines.

In my experience fluorocarbon’s less visible promise has held up to be true, and is something that I believe is responsible for me getting more bites, and fish to the boat.  So I tend to use it a lot.

I find that it is also stiffer than mono, generally speaking, which can be a good thing at times – for example when wanting a stiff line to transmit action from a dodger to a lure.

Its less visible property also allows me to use stronger line at times without sacrificing much of my presentation.  Some examples might be when targeting larger fish, fishing new structure or needing to avoid line twist.

Some people complain that fluorocarbon is more costly than mono and therefore suggest not using it.

While this is true, it isn’t like fluorocarbon is insanely expensive.  And I always counter with how much money to do you spend on gas, lures, rods, reels, etc to be successful in fishing – and then you are going to not buy a line that might help because it costs $10 more for a spool?

One way to reduce the cost is to not buy the little leader spools of line.  Those are way overpriced for both mono and fluorocarbon.  Instead buy the big “main line” sized spools.  It is the same material and much cheaper per foot.

If the larger spool is too bulky to carry around in your vest/tackle box, then transfer the line to a smaller spool and take that instead.

This beat up little spool has been refilled several times with Seagar (my favorite fluorocarbon brand).  It can hold the entire 200 yard “main line” spool of Seagar that I buy.

FlorocarbonSpool

So switch to fluorocarbon and improve your fish catching today.

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