Thread: Panfish are not line shy nor are any other species

What you may have seen or discovered means zero to me when my buddy is using the same bait, same size line, same presentation, but I'm using hi-vis line and he's using clear and outfishing me 10-1 within 6 feet of each other.

I'll take my chances on lo-vis or no-vis on gills and redears since seeing that play its self out more than a few times.

Wish somebody would tell those big shellcracker at Tippa Lake in MS that !!! Tested the high vis on them this spring. Same diameter, same bait ... Clear out fished the Hi vis 10 to 1 . I think it varies from each body of water.

Just got back from the beach about 3 weeks ago. Tried a little bank fishing and was catching lady fish, redfish, pompano, and whiting. The monofilament got cut off 4 times in the process of the morning so I switched to a wire leader. I caught a few fish, but thought the bite was slower due to the sun being higher in the sky. What was cutting me off never bit. The next morning I started with the wire leader and was getting no bites. I changed to a multi-hook monofilament rig and immediately the bite was back on, sometimes the catch was 2 at a time.

You could fish every Saturday for a year at say four different lakes in three different states and average 30 fish a Saturday fishing with whatever method you wanted. And at the end of that year declare that your method used is preferred or proves other methods are not needed because you caught 1,560 fish during the year. But you can't know if it makes a difference because had you used another method you might have caught 2,500 fish with an average weight 40 percent heavier than the ones you caught.

I remember when a lot of people still used dacron line and not everyone used monofilament. You think watching people switch from dacron to monofilament over time was not because they were catching more fish with mono?? That they just got suckered in by a new fangled product?? I remember when people use to fish a lot with cane poles and dacron line...heck that's how I caught my first fish. By the time I was 10 years old chasing bluegill around the bank of local creeks,ponds,lakes,swamps and rivers I had figured out that it did matter....and that's been about 50 years ago.

The funniest thing in the world is to hang on a tree limb,or bluff over clear water....drop in your bait...and watch 10 fish rush up to it and then stop cold and just stare at it...then slowly lose interest and swim away. And you change up something and it repeats itself over and over.And then you find the right combination and drop that thing in and the fish start fighting over who can grab it first. And fish can see better than we think even in fairly heavy green tinted water.

I caught a bass in a farm pond one time on tan colored dacron line and a bare hook with a duck feather tied on the line an inch above the hook. On any given day you might catch some fish on anything fished about anyway.

But if your goal is to give yourself every chance to have the most attractive presentation in lure,bait,terminal tackle that will attract the greatest number of strikes from the most wary of ANY given species.....then EVERYTHING matters some of the time....and most of the time.

The late, great, Elwood "Buck" Perry taught me some seriously valuable lessons back in the 60's. He looked at line, lures and even your boat, with one perspective only: depth & speed control. To Buck, it mattered not if your line was visible or not. (As a matter of fact, he wanted the fish to see his line, which would lead them to the bait he was using!). Buck boiled down line size as a tool enabling you to keeping your lure in the depth that the fish were at, with the ability to stay there throughout the retrieve or troll.

Being the accepted "Father of Structure Fishing", I've always approached my fishing based on these two vital controls (depth & speed) which Buck taught extensively through seminars & books. It has yielded tremendous successes for me over 50 years of wetting a line. Now with all that in mind, I always use the lightest line possible for crappie fishing; and most often, this is a main line, high vis braid with a fluorocarbon leader. This affords me the greatest degree of sensitivity - and invisibility at the end where it counts. I approach my crappie fishing with the same perspective as that of an avid fly fisherman pursuing trout in a gin clear stream. It's just how I enjoy our sport. Fishing is whatever you want to use that gives you the greatest pleasure.

There's more to it than just color and diameter. One line might make it easier to feel or see bites. Another might impart a different action to the lure or bait.

In order to prove it once and for all, you'd have to do extensive testing of practically all variables. Then you'd have to get others to do the same to confirm your results.

Reads like the Pickerel and Crappie are competing hard for the amount of bait fish in the lake.. they still hit with a wire leader ,it has to be fun to fight Pickerel on light tackle. My opinion Light ,clear, Line catches more when the fish has time to look at it bait (under a float or ice fishing) I use a rod with 4# mono for slip float and 6 # if casting an drifting. BUT you can't be catching if you're tying on lures every other cast

How do I ever manage to catch a fish?????????????