Casting Distance

 

Adventure Location: Rockport, Texas

Today's Date: 6-22-2022

The day was HOT early but we headed to the walking trail to give it a trial or at least consider it. Sierra was parked in a nearly empty parking lot again. The OFM got his things together and we started on the trail. About a quarter mile down the trail the OFM stopped and looked around then felt the air and humidity and felt himself and decided it was not a proper day for a sweaty exercise and we headed back to Sierra. When we got to Sierra, it said that it was glad the OFM showed some sense for a change. Back to the A/C Castle we went and thought about what next.

Finally a brilliant thought came to the OFM. We could go over to the Beach Park where we have room to check out the unproven to us idea that braid fishing line casts a lot farther than the same strength mono filament fishing line. It has never seemed right to us. At least we can do the testing before the beach gets crowded and not have to exert the OFM too much in the hot sun.

For those that do not know about it the braid line came out several years ago as the perfect fishing line. Yeah right was our thoughts back then. Well braid is a lot stronger per inch of diameter than mono. For instance 30 pound braid is the same diameter as 8 pound mono. Each material has features that are very good. But that smaller diameter is supposed to allow braid to cast a lot farther than mono of the same strength. We feel that is an over simplification.

When braid first hit the market, lots of “experts” did comparison tests to prove it using lead weights. The distances were significant. We tried it for three years and found some serious weaknesses compared to mono for where and how we fish. But at the same time braid had some serious great things over mono.

Well with the calm area today we went down to test the theory of the lines. By the way both types of line are excellent for fishing.

What we had noticed about braid/mono during our comparison fishing times is that the casting distance distance with lures was not significant for the OFM.

Today we got parked at the parking lot in a good spot to use for testing casting distance for lures.

We would be casting toward the left end of the pile of oyster shells for distance from the rear wheel of Sierra into the slight breeze.

The same rod and reel would be used for the casting with just the spool changed to the line of the moment. It is our normal rod and reel so the OFM was familiar with it. Even the ¼ oz lure is the same one for both lines.

The braid is 10 pound Power Pro line that is the same physical diameter as 3 pound mono. The mono is Stren 8 pound mono that is the same diameter as 30 pound braid. And the testing began,

The weather stayed nice and constant for the whole time we were casting and marking the lure location between the casts for all the casts. Here is a picture of the longest cast marker and the shortest cast marker.

The longest cast was braid and the shortest was mono. It surprised the OFM how consistent his casting was for distance. All the braid was at the same location plus or minus two feet and all the mono was plus or minus two and a half feet. But the biggest surprise was that from the longest braid cast to the shortest mono cast was only a hint over six feet difference. So our result did not show any significant yardage differences when lure wind resistance became a factor to the casting distance.

There was not any automatic 20% longer for either line for our style of fishing casting. Both have good characteristics for certain situations. The characteristic that makes the OFM use mono for his fishing here in the central Texas coast is all the rocks and stuff that abrades the braid faster than mono. Where the teams do most of their fishing having good abrasion resistance is more important than casting a few feet farther.

That test was just one more thing to help us in trying to have tooooo much fun.