Coloured Line

[Portland Pirate]

I done an experiment about 5 years ago when coloured lines and shock leader became fashionable.

I fished for a season mostly in the Solent with its very coloured water and on Chesil with mainly crystal clear water. I used 2 rods and reels. One reel was loaded with Diawa infinty duo, which I still think is the best line for fishing using a multiplier. The other reel I used a variety of red and yellow mainlines. I also used red and yellow shock leader and clear shock leader. Rigs were clear 70lb shock leader for the main body and amnesia hook snoods.

Basically my overall findings were that at night it made no difference to catch rate at all. Whilst during the day catches of flounder and Plaice were slightly higher on the coloured leaders and lines (only by about 5%).

Catches of fish such as Bass and Smoothhound, Red Mullet, Pollock, Trigger Fish and gurnard were substantially effected by the coloured lines and leaders. Bass and Smoothound were the most significantly effected. I was catching around 10 bass and Smoothound on clear leaders to every 1 caught on the coloured lines. I only caught 1 Trigger fish and Bream on a coloured line and leader and no Red Mullet at all.

So for me I ditched the colours and now fish only clear leaders. I have recently changed to F1 for my mainline (only because I could not find anyone selling infinity duo), but that is still under test for me.

This year I am going to see if Fluro Carbon snoods, will make much difference to my catch rate. It did when I used it when I lived in Spain, but the waters there are ultra clear.

Portland Pirate.

[geejayy]

i'm not a great lover of brightly coloured lines but thats just a me thing.

most sea fish are not line shy especially at night however if i did a lot of daylight fishing i'd be more inclined to use clear or natural colours.

this past 10years i've used as main line- challenge clear. / ultima seastrike fluo yeller. / ultima f1 black./ ultima red ice, red.
there seems to be no appreciable difference in catch rates no matter what the colour,
if i can get it i use a clear shock leader but often use greased weasel in grey or fluo orange in that order of preference again with no noticable difference

for snoods i use either shockleader ( see above) for the big stuff (hopefully).
amnesia in clear or black, just lately this last year i've been useing some flurocarbon hooklengths as by all accounts they are less visable in water.
in daylight this may make some difference but i've noticed none at night

[geejayy]

after reading P/P's post above , i've noticed a big drop in my catches of decent bass since i used the last of my yellow seastrike which was a kilo bulk spool & seemed tolast for ever.

[KKK]

Personally I would try that same experiment as P/P mentioned but I would also use red line for the snoods when targeting flatfish, people may be slightly surprised.

[Bluesbro]

Im with you kkk on the whole red line for flatties, especially sole, using red amnesia on my snoods made my catch rate for them go up over double.

[Portland Pirate]

I noticed a considerable downward change in my catch rate both in the Solent and on Chesil when I tried out coloured line and shock leader.

Portland Pirate.