This article appeared in Fishing Facts magazine in the summer of 1995

Catching crappies sometimes requires dropping your bait into a menacing snarl of limbs, branches and other tangles. If you fail to get a bite, though, you usually end up losing your tackle in the web of snags.

The thin-diameter braided line allows anglers to enter the crappie’s tangled web of cover without the worry of losing hook, line, and sinker. Using braided line can save you money, as you will not be losing so many jigs and tackle. It can also save you time you would have spent retying lures. Braided line also frays less than monofilament, even when it rubs against tree limbs and bark or boat dock cables.

If you feel that the fish are finicky and are shying away from the braided line, try attaching a small swivel and tying on a leader line of 2- to 4-pound mono. With this setup, you only lose the jig and leader when you break off a snag rather than 20 yards of line.

A variety of colors of braided line make it more effective, especially in clear water. White line can be used in stained to muddy conditions, but use dark green or gray in clear water. If your spool is filled with white line, you can make it less visible by coloring it with a black or green waterproof marker.

One of the drawbacks of braided line is knot slippage, but guide Mark Dahl has a solution for this. Dahl ties his jig with a Palomar knot and then melts the tag end of the line using a lighter or match. “If the knot does slip, it won’t slip any farther than that tag end,” he says. Various glues applied to the knot will also keep the knot from slipping, but Dahl’s way is cheaper and less sticky.

Braided line allows you to pull your lure free from snags most of the time, but you need to be careful. “If you do get hung up, do not wrap the line around your hands and pull,” says Dahl. “The line will slice through your hand or fingers, leaving a nasty cut.” Dahl wraps his line around the butt of his rod or up around the reel seat and pulls slowly and steadily until the hook straightens out. Wrapping the line around a pair of pliers or a fishing net handle also works. “If you pre-bend your hook, a slow, steady pull will straighten it out again, whereas jerking and yanking it will get you into more trouble,” Dahl says.

If you try pulling your lure out of a snag without wrapping the line around something, the braided line has a tendency to embed itself in the spool. To prevent casting problems, make sure you pull the embedded line out of the spool and rewind it on the reel.

Braided line can be used in most crappie applications, though the line’s buoyancy creates a few problems when fishing 1/32- or 1/64-ounce jigs in deep water. “It tends to float more than mono does, which slows down the lure’s fall,” Dahl says, “But it’s not enough to be detrimental to the action of the jig.”

In live bait situations, Dahl uses a heavier weight than he does with monofilament due to the braided line’s buoyancy. With a small split-shot on the braided line, a minnow tends to swim more easily and gets wrapped up in cover. A heavier pinch-on weight works best for fishing with minnows in heavy cover.

Since braided line has no stretch, Dahl recommends loosening your reel’s drag to prevent losing fish and breaking rods. Jerking too hard on an ultralight rod when your lure is snagged can snap the rod if you’re using braided line on a tightened-down drag. It can also tear the hook out of a crappie’s paper-thin mouth when setting the hook or even when fighting the fish. To prevent setting the hook too hard, Dahl avoids any arm movement; he just snaps his wrists to drive the hook home.

Even though braided line costs more, its benefits to crappie anglers make up for the couple of extra dollars.

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