And i take it you have some experience in "all that guff" Trig ?

Experience in the order in which light becomes less visible under the surface ? Or experience gained from using different coloured lines as a test bed ?

Or you busy counting your small stack of pound coins ?

j.

As FA has already explained, it doesn't matter at all and never did. I can't believe how many people have been fooled by this ridiculous assertion that the line disappears when the colour does. The red will be replaced by shades of grey, heading towards black, when the red fails to show up as red, which will be far more visible than a colourless line. A simple enough concept, I reckon

I think you are spot on....

Whether it is "spot on" or not was not my point,why not post what you know,or what you believe to be the facts in the first place rather than post a negative reply to a post(because post killers have effected this site). If it is "spot on" Paul,why did you not post your knowledge on the subject (opposed to recommending a flying lead)when Andy asked the original question about line colour ?

When Flurocarbons first came on the scene i'll bet plenty scoffed at the idea,me included,it now has the endorsements of the Japanese univ of aquaculture with data to support a 5/6 - 1 increase in takes received,and has a place in every carp anglers rucksack,whether as leaders or hooklengths.

I await enlightenment.

So you'd rather continue discussing the perceived merits of this 'invisible' line and make us all look daft, than admit that it's a non-starter and move on?

Fluorocarbon is a handy material in the right circumstances and isn't comparable at all.

Paul did make a very good point about high visibility lines though. I've had surface baits taken after the fish has clearly followed the floating (and presumably highly visible from below) hooklink, and not from mug fish on heavily stocked waters either It would make sense that the fish would investigate a high-viz line. They are, after all, an inquisitive species. If we all tried it, though, the effect would be somewhat different...

Octopus I don't think line colour matters one jot because I don't think carp detect it visually in murky or in crystal clear water.....

I have used every colour of monofilament line imaginable since the mid-1970's e.g. white, brown, black, multi-coloured, clear, green, yellow, red, blue, camouflaged......I think carp detect line through their other senses which are very different to ours...

The best bet I feel always always is to have it pinned down hard to the bottom, I feel, this can minimise the risk of carp detecting the main line, the colour is irrelevant.....

Holy sh*t now that’s a serious can of worms.


That’s really interesting, would you be willing to expand upon that a little Paul? Do you believe that the carp can detect the line chemically, i.e. taste it for want of a better word, or do you feel that they can sense its physical presence without touching the line, or indeed a bit of both? Do you have any ideas about the specific senses in play, or is this more of a general belief based upon years of observation and experience?

To be honest I have never thought beyond the carp being able too see the line and feel it if they are in direct contact. But now that you have made me think beyond that, one or two of my own experiences would appear to make a little more sense.

This really does open up a whole new set of questions and line of thought (no pun intended). For example, is fluorocarbon successful because the fish can’t see it, or is it successful because its chemical composition is simply different to those that the carp have learned to associate with danger? Was braid really so devastating initially because it was supple or was it working because the danger signals stopped short of the hook bait?

One thing I have learned over the years is that in many instances different works better than good. What I mean by that is, crap bait that is different may often out fish good bait that is the norm, a really crappy rig may do the business despite of its poor mechanics simply because the fish have never seen its like and don’t know how to deal with it. Could there be an element of this with new lines/hooklinks not because of their obvious properties but because they don’t give off the same signals as those that have gone before?

Along those same lines I have just thought of something that puzzled me for years. To be honest I feel a bit of a prat now, because the potential answer suddenly appears to be obvious. So obvious that I can't believe I could not see the wood for the trees.

In the early- mid 90s a friend introduced me to a fairly obscure braid that he had come across. On paper at least, this braid was the answer to an anglers dreams. It had a tiny diameter and profile for its breaking strain, it was a nice unobtrusive dark green, it was very supple and more importantly you could hardly feel it against your lips if you ran it through your mouth. It made our usual 25lb silkworm hook links look and feel like tow rope. It appeared so good that it almost felt unethical using it.

So as to gauge exactly how good this new wonder braid was, we fished one rod each with 25lb silkworm and one rod each with the new braid tied in an identical way then sat back dreaming of reels going into meltdown and wondering if we had enough reels of film with us. The experiments went on for many months. Truth be told, probably several months longer than they should have, because the results were quite conclusive. Despite all our expectations the 25lb silkworm consistently and quite convincingly out fished the wonder braid.

Could never quite get our heads round that one? But if we assume that you are correct Paul, to the fish, using senses different to ours the line in question may have actually stood out like a sore thumb before its positive qualities even had a chance of coming into play?

The $2000 question is, were they ever positive qualities or a total irrelevance, because they were what a human preceived as being positive qualities, as guaged by human senses?

Andy some stuff of intrest.

A carp has microscopic 'hairs' particularly concentrated all along the lateral line that split into three separate lines around its head. (Under the jaw, over the eye and around the snout).
These hairs are called 'neuromasts' and are super sensitive to water pressure and other stimuli and each are held in a microscopic elongated cell filled with a jelly like substance which produces a small voltage or nerve impulse.They are sensitive to ANY pressure change in the water which is the perfect medium for them to work. These send a direct signal straight to the carps brain and from what I have learnt in my mind there is no doubt they have a perfect mental picture of their surroundings for some distance.
They also, I have learned, send out audio pulses through bodily movement which is then reflected back from nearby objects and these reflections stimulate the neuromasts.
This is akin to sonar but on a much lower audio frequency.
A carp’s sight is generally poor for various reasons but that is another subject and its sight is really only good for wide angle short range work (hence 'fish eye lens' a term for wide angle photography).I suspect movement of a food item for example from watching my carp in a tank is seen far more readily and detected by the neuromasts as well, than say a boilie on the bottom from the same distance. These neuromasts working all the time in unity is why a carp knows exactly where it is day or night (as long as the carp has some movement and this could be just the wave of the tail) and how far exactly from any static or mobile object like a baitboat or other fish or animals,snag or the bank.These neuromasts can be likened to an old record player stylus tracking the bumps in the groove of a cut old fashioned vinyl record or disc. Someone asked somewhere on 'ere if carp had built in GPS... this is better really, as the carp will know every inch of its environment as well as we know our bedroom, office, workplace or back garden aided too by memory and experience.

To my thinking, it matters not one jot what you use or how you use it, they will know its there;);) and i totally agree with Paul when stating the "best" way is pinned to the lake bed.

kind regards Jeff

Great thread this, very interesting.