Trying to Find a "Pill" for a Braided-Line Headache

My friend, Charlie, recently found what appears to be a solution to the long-term problem he has had with braided line wrapping around the blade arm of his beetle spin during a cast. He attaches a couple of bobber stops.

I routinely don't fish beetle spins, but I do fish spinnerbaits, as well as a number of crankbaits. In any given day's time on the water, I repeatedly will have to unwrap my braided line from around the blade arm of the spinnerbait and the front hook of the crankbait. The real frustration for me comes when I've made a hurried cast to a nearby swirl in the water, only to have the line foul in the bait, thus making it impossible to work the lure back to the boat.

Unfortunately, patience never has been one of my virtues, and when this problem keeps recurring, especially as many as three or four times in a row (standard fare on windy days), I often don't handle it very well. For that reason, I made a trip to Dick's Sporting Goods today and bought what I'm hoping will be the end-all to my braided-line headache.

I bought some of these wire leaders. The ones I chose are 6 inches long and are rated at 30-lb. test.

It's not that I distrust Charlie's solution. As a matter of fact, if my experiment fails, I likely will adopt his bobber-stops method. I just first want to see if perhaps my idea offers an alternative.

It'll probably be next week before I make my next fishing trip and have a chance to test the wire leaders. If you're interested in seeing the results, I plan to include them with my fishing report of next week's outing.

After some additional research of the Internet, I found another suggested solution to the problem of braided line fouling a lure during the cast. That suggestion was to use about a 3-inch-long section of one of those tiny coffee-stirring straws. You just thread the line through the straw before tying to a snap, other connecting device, or directly to the lure. Once in place, the straw is supposed to cure the problem without affecting the action of the bait.