Clear water smallmouth

[QUOTE=Devils Horse;297725]Don't know that much about Gobys. They're an invasive species of prolific, small bottom dwelling fish that hitched a ride to the great lakes in ships' ballast tanks. The smallies chew on them rascals pretty regular.

I fished Erie a couple of years ago out of Buffalo, NY, and caught a ton of Gobys on spoons. Many casts in 20-35ft of water would result in either a Goby or a fat sassy brown fish. There are some beauties up there. They get bigger overall at places down here like Dale and Pickwick, but there's a heck of lot more of them up there. I ain't talkin minnows either, 2-4 pounders are run of the mill and 5+ fish often enough. 6 and over are not out of the question.

I used another web site to arrange a side trip with a local guy when I had to trek deep into Yankee territory for a wedding. Heck of nice guy with a 21 ft Triton. Had funny accent but the boy was a deadly smallhead hunter. We didn't have any over 5, but plenty between 2 and 3, and a couple over 4. He emailed me a week later and said he found the "good" fish 5-7 ft deeper than we'd fished.

Wife: "You're going out fishing with a guy you met on the internet? Are you crazy?"
Me: "Yep. Yep."
Wife: "Is it possible for you to do ANYTHING without going fishing?"
I give her 'the look'.
Wife rolling her eyes: "Nevermind."[/QUOTE]

Jim, I'm still laughing I think we are married to the same woman, why don't they think like we do, LOL....

Don't know man, but sometimes I'm glad they don't.

If the wife thought like I did we'd be bankrupt and nekkid, living in cave over on Barren.

Just a NOTE and some information about the visibility of fishing line in water. This is a highly technical discussion so be-warned. But it will give you some insight into how your fishing line works.

Now it depends on the water color and clarity but the fishing line that's hardest to see in clear water is the line that's Refractive Index (RI)most closely matches the RI of the water itself.

You can test a fishing lines refractive index easily with a polarized light microscope (PLM) and some refractive index liquids.

These RI liquids are used in microscopy and many geologist have them in their labs to help them test the RI of different minerals.

I use to use RI liquids to test the Refractive Index of Asbestos fibers.

I used various RI liquids to help me identify the 6 different types of asbestos fibers. Each type of asbestos fiber has different optical properties so scientists are able to Identify them by their optical properties using a PLM.

I would think that the reason a plastic fishing line is harder to see is because the manufacture of that fishing line used a plastic extrusion process that more closely matches the plastic's RI to that of the water being fished.

RI is the way that light passes though an object that allows some light to pass through the object. As light enters a crystalline structure it's bent by the molecules inside the structure. Only crystals have this property as their molecules are arranged in uniform and predictable patterns. All the molecules line in in the same way along lines of force. That's why it's a crystal. Noncrystalline structures may not have the ability to pass light through them.

As the light enters the crystal it's slowed down by the interaction of the light photons with the crystal's atoms. This make the light bend in predictable ways. The more the light slows down the more it appears to bend. And light of different wave lengths is effected differently. Some light waves are slowed down more than others and appear to bend more.


If you pass light though a crystal while it's emerged in a RI liquid of the same Refractive Index the crystal will become invisible under the microscope.

Plastics that are used to make fishing line have crystalline structures too.

While taking a course on asbestos Identification at the University of Alabama at Birmingham I was taught to exclude different plastic fibers from asbestos fibers by putting the specimen on a hot plate and turning up the heat to melt the plastic fibers. Different plastics melt at different temps. But asbestos fibers have an extremely high melting point and thus can be differentiated from plastic fibers which melt a very low temperatures. Remember that asbestos is a mineral or a ROCK. Rocks melt as that's why we see molten lava coming out of a volcano. But it takes a lot more heat and energy to melt rocks.

Polypropylene plastic fibers have similar optical properties as Chrysotile Asbestos Fibers and can be confused as asbestos if one is not careful. One must put the fibers on a glass slide and heat them on a hot plate up to 175 deg F to make sure that it does not melt before confirming that it's indeed asbestos. Because if you claim that a plastic fiber is asbestos and it's not your going to cost your client a lot more money. It costs a lot more to remove asbestos insulation vs polypropylene insulation. And if your client spends a lot of money unnecessarily and finds out that you made this mistake he most likely will be calling his attorney to recoup his expenses. So you must be right 100% of the time! That's why samples are often duplicated and tested by two or more different analysts or labs or both.

If you can get access to a PLM and some RI liquids all you have to do is put the fishing line in a few different RI liquids and view it under the PLM and see how visible the line is. The more visible the line the greater the difference between the fishing lines RI and the liquids RI. So the less visible the line becomes the closer the RI's become. Once you get the right RI liquid you will figure out the fishing lines refractive Index. Now just compare the fishing lines RI to that of clean waters.

This is already being done by the fishing line's manufactures. By blending different types of plastics into the new fishing lines they are making the fishing lines harder for the fish to see. Isn't Science great?

I can dunk P-line in some redneck RI liquid (Miller Lite) and you can barely see it at all. I must be non crystaline, because it goes in yellow and comes out clear.

Kidding Moose, that was actually a pretty interesting read. A tad pointy headed, but good.

I just returned from Lake of the Woods. This was my 8th year up there, and every year, even though I take a lot of tackle, I end up using top-water, jerk-baits and tubes, with tubes doing 65% of the damage. I used 12 pound P-Line, which held up fine. I think you can use heavier line up north for smallies than what you can use on Dale or Cumberland in the winter.

The best tip I can give on tubes, is when I'm up there, I have far more success using a jig head with the hook exposed than on a Texas Rigged tube, which I prefer here.

Hey, here's an item of discussion....

I was a non-boater in a BFL about a month ago. My boater was fishing a jerkbait and doing quite well on the smallmouth...no keepers, but whooping 'em pretty darn good! He had a spinning rod with braided line and about a 3 ft leader of mono or fluorcarbon that he tied to his jerbait. Anyone else utilize a setup like this? I know Shinichi Fukae and Gary Yamamoto use a setup like this for their shakey heads and sinkos, but this was the first I'd seen it for a jerkbait.

Can someone shine some light on this?

I don't do it myself, but from what I've read it's a fairly common practice among the pros. They must be using a pretty soft rod to keep from tearing the hooks out or breaking the floro, that braid doesn't stretch.

[QUOTE=Devils Horse;297732]Don't know man, but sometimes I'm glad they don't.

If the wife thought like I did we'd be bankrupt and nekkid, living in cave over on Barren.[/QUOTE]

HA HA HA, ain't it he truth, gosh ya gotta love'em I guess.