Crack-Offs? – Cobblers!

Crack-Offs? – Cobblers! Learn how to cast!

Lure rods can take some stick but, really, do you need 80lb braid?

My good friend, Mr Kevin Perkins, was at the centre of this as it was he that was questioning the need for 80lbs braid in order to cast heavy, but not exceedingly weighty (when compared with a paving slab, as Kevin put it) lure. It was pointed out that the weight of the lure and its velocity soon after casting can easily snap a lighter braid if A) there is a sudden bird’s nest and/or B) there are broken fibres in the body of the braid.

Even the very knowledgeable and braid expert, Dave Chilton (of Kryston Advanced Angling), weighed in with the claim that because braid is that much thinner than a monofilament line it makes sense to use the same diameter in braid as you would in a monofilament. Fair point, but if you would use a 0.35mm monofilament, most braids will only give you 50 or 60lbs and not the 80lbs that some claim to use. He did suggest, though, to double up the line when knotting it to a trace as this maintains the braid’s strength more.

I use a maximum of 50lbs braid because I would normally use a 12lbs line in monofilament, which I believe would be strong enough for pike fishing, but I know some old stagers that would only use 8lbs line for spinning and other lure fishing. So, I had to think about this long and very, very hard, but here’s my two-penn’orth for what it’s worth and this will no doubt re-open the debate.

Causes of crack-offs – faults in the line?

Unless you are susceptible to causing many bird’s nests whilst casting, the braid well down on the spool should never get damaged unless you have at some stage been tangled around some underwater metalwork or other obstruction that required a bulldozer to pull free from. If that should happen then maybe the best thing to do is discard the line entirely and reload the reel thus avoiding any risk whatsoever.

You should always check the last 6-10 feet of line anyway in case that has been pulling around submerged branches or the like and always keep checking your knots. That’s simply common sense, but I do realise that ‘common sense’ is a rare commodity in some people these days. Even so the type of crack-offs being referred to would occur maybe 10 or 15yds into the cast and not at the end of the cast.

This being the case, I believe the main reason for crack-offs is bad casting practice.

We are talking largely here about multipliers although I did witness Kevin get a bird’s nest on his very first cast on brand new braid on a fixed spool reel. Although he tried to blame the Almighty for it, the old saying “It is impossible to make anything foolproof, because fools are so ingenious.” came to my mind. Sorry, Kevin.

When casting with multipliers, you must ensure that your swing, and your release of the spool, are very smooth indeed and that there are no overruns to cause a bird’s nest, you must exert a little pressure from your thumb onto the spool during the first few revolutions. Unless, that is, you have some form of magnetic overrun control on your reel. It’s in the first 10-15 yds of a bad cast when an overrun will develop and this is the danger zone.

Braid is immensely strong when used in a straight pull situation even in its smaller diameters. For this straight pull there has to be no knots in the line and the unions at each end must be smooth, creating no sharp edges that could cause a break. If I was testing a line like this I would have it running off a piece of dowelling or maybe a spare spool that once contained line and any knots would be well buried deep on the spool.

This would ensure there were no sharp edges and that it was entirely due to the strength of the line itself that was being tested. That’s as close as I can get in a home test situation. At proper testing laboratories, they do have specialist machines to perform this.

Line testing machine

So just looking at a line, say the Cortland Master Braid that I recently reviewed, the test that was carried out by one company in the USA. They found that the 20lbs version of this lines actually broke, in a straight pull test, at over 40lbs.

If the same is true of the 30lbs braid I was reviewing it would have broken at over 60lbs and I would put my money on Kevin being correct in his assumption that such a strength of line would probably cast the proverbial paving slab. That is assuming you cast it, or a heavy lure at least, smoothly and that any resulting overruns unwind themselves quickly and without problems during the cast.

Dave Chilton pointed out to me the expert beachcaster chaps who cast 5 and 6ozs leads that travel at the speed of a bullet and I would agree with him that when using their gear you do need some stronger leader material such as Kryston’s Ton-Up. But their reels are stripped down versions and are treated with special lubricants in order to get the distances required for tournament casting.

Dave does suggest that if you are fishing on some of those puddles they have in the Lake District and Scotland that have rocks the size of houses, you too might want to use a leader like Ton-Up. That’s talking about abrasion though and even then only for the last 10-15 feet or so.

The spare loop theory

My belief is that the main cause of a crack-off is firstly a bad cast, putting too much effort into launching the lure and then not controlling the spin of the spool sufficiently to prevent an overrun. That in itself will not cause a crack-off, but what can happen in an overrun situation is that a loop of line will get carried backwards around the spool and trap the leading line (see photo for effect).

Spare loop

Now what happens is that the line being trapped wants to stop the lure whilst that’s still travelling at maximum velocity. The sudden stopping effort that this creates where the line is now pulled against itself can be enough to break it with far less force than the line strength is tested for, ie, a 30lbs line can break at 10lbs or less.

It’s almost as if there could be a razor blade it’s up against when a material is caught against itself. A bit like in Ju-Jitsu where you use an opponent’s force against himself and using very little yourself.

When I first started work we used a lot of sisal string, some of which was strong enough to support a full grown man. Using a technique we learnt, I could break it with my own bare hands without any pain using a sharp tug. It used the method above where it broke against itself. The technique involved pulling the string against a loop of itself and this is my belief as to what can cause crack-offs.

In my pike lure fishing, I perhaps develop one overrun in maybe 100 casts or more and even then they are never so serious because I don’t put too much effort into the swing. It’s all in the technique, a bit like watching some fly anglers flogging the air and the leader is cracking like a whip, but their casts are really quite pathetic. Get it right and you can cast a good distance with hardly any effort at all.

Ron Clay also put his finger on it when he said “You have to develop an intelligent thumb”, the thumb being the appendage that you use to control the spin of the spool and, therefore, the overrun.

That’s all it is in my opinion. So if you want to avoid crack-offs you don’t have to step up to 80lbs line, just learn how to cast smoothly and effectively rather than trying to hit the Sun with a Replicant.