Do you prefer to lure fish with bright or more natural coloured mainlines?

Okay, so it’s not bass lure fishing, but I will never forget a bait session many moons ago at a spot on the south Devon coastline which requires a couple of ropes to get down to and I’m not 100% sure I’d still have the balls to get down to. Do any of you blokes here with youngish children find yourself questioning the odd spot you’d have once almost skipped down to? It’s not a conscious decision on my part to think about these things more these days, rather I have found it creeping up on me and I have always wondered if it’s (unconsciously) to do with being a dad. Sorry, I digress. At the time I remember that very bright red Ultima Red Ice mono being a popular mainline on many multiplier reels, indeed I used to fish with this line a lot because it was fairly cheap and it was almost impossible to break if you used a good knot from mainline to shockleader. I can remember giggling though when this (seriously good angler) mate of mine whacked out a rig which had a bright red hooklength on, plus the sun was shining which was surely going to mean his chances were zero - but pretty soon he was reeling in a nice spotted ray which obviously didn’t mind the bright red snood at all. Guess how many rays I caught that session with my clear hooklengths?

We all have our own thoughts and ideas on what fish can actually see underwater and/or what might put them off our lures or not, but personally I really like bright coloured braids for a bunch of different reasons - tied via the FG knot to a clear length of fluoro leader I might add. As much as I like a bright coloured mainline because it’s easier for me to see and it works well from a photography point of view, I don’t feel at all comfortable without a clear leader. I have nothing remotely scientific as such to back this up but it’s in my head that I should not be bass fishing with a bright yellow or green or orange etc. braid direct to my lure clip and lure. I know that some lure anglers don’t like using leaders and I notice that the people I know who fish like this tend to favour those dark green braids especially, but again, I am sure there are lure anglers out there who are doing just fine with a bright braid direct to their lure……………

I don’t need to go into the braids I personally prefer for my lure fishing when you can see what I use either here or in a blog post from the other day, and the spinning reels I have here are mostly loaded up with bright braids to clear leaders - but there are different ways of looking at all this. There is an angler and a guide who I really respect, he’s great to talk to about all things bass fishing, and he is also a blast to fish with. I hope that plenty of you here have bought and read Marc Cowling’s excellent book “The Lure of the Bass” - check my review of it here - and from more time spent with Marc I can’t help but notice how he shies away from bright braids. I quote from page 22 of his book: “When it comes to colours, clearly you want it (your braid) to blend into the background as much as possible, which is why I don’t look beyond dark or moss green. I just cannot see the logic in lure fishing, for what is an instinctively wary creature, with bright pink, blue or yellow line - no matter how long your leader is…………………...you have just retrieved 15m of a colourful line over its head or across its nose, I believe the likelihood of that fish taking the lure will diminish significantly.”

At the end of the day we come back to who really knows because we aren’t fish but we must go with what we feel most confident in; I will tell you how I got to thinking about this though. I know that Marc really likes the dark green and not very expensive Savage Gear HD8 Silencer 8-strand braid, and whilst I am doing some work with Savage Gear, I have shied away from this braid in their catalogue because I do prefer a bright coloured mainline. Nobody at Savage Gear has ever asked me to fish with their HD8 Silencer braid by the way, but I would be daft not to take note of the mainline that a very good angler and guide implicitly trusts and which I can obviously get hold of pretty easily if needs be. Maybe it’s the way I’m made, but I would consider it remarkably ignorant if I didn’t take note of the gear that other bass anglers I know and respect have put their trust in for their own fishing - hence me picking up on Marc’s favoured mainline but it’s dark green and I prefer a nice bright braid!

But then out of the blue the other day a spool of Savage Gear HD8 Silencer in the 0.15mm/20lb turned up here at home - in dark green of course, indeed this braid doesn’t come in any other colours. As I said, nobody has asked me to use it although one of the grownups at Savage Gear HQ obviously thought Henry should at least get to see this line, it’s a braid I have never fished with, and even if I do have a serious thing for a couple of rather expensive braids, I feel more comfortable yapping about spools of braid that come in at under the £20 mark - which this Silencer stuff does, as per here for example. This is categorically not a review of this braid by the way, and I can’t get away from how strange it feels to have a Penn Slammer III 3500 loaded up with a dark green mainline when I have been so used to fishing this machine of a spinning reel loaded up with the lovely bright green Sufix 131 braid - but this Savage Gear HD8 Silencer braid is a new mainline to me, it happens to be dark green, it feels nice, and in my hands it feels comparable in thickness to something like the awesome, trust with my life Sufix 832 braid. Not particularly thin, not one of these silky-smooth braids, but it obviously works well because I know how much Marc likes it. I also asked around on Facebook and enough anglers came back to me talking positively about this HD8 Silencer braid for me to at least close my eyes and try to get past the fact that it’s not a nice bright colour! Can a more subtle coloured mainline to a clear leader compared to a nice bright mainline to a clear leader make any difference at all? I haven’t got a clue, but I’m going to give this stuff a bit of time and see how I get on with it. I will report back in due course………………..

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