Braided Line Secrets with World Renown Angler Patrick Sebile

Hello and welcome to another edition of the My Fishing Cape Cod Podcast from myfishingcapecod.com. This is your host, Kevin Collins, and I'm very pleased to be with you today for a very special edition of the MFCC Podcast.

For those of you familiar with our programs, we usually do a show every week and it's catered to pretty much everybody here on the Cape and the Islands. It's more of a weekly formatted fishing report where we hear from a variety of different resources, including folks from local bait and tackle shops for those that might be uninitiated to these podcasts.

We published a podcast a week or two back with MFCC member Calvin, and we did a deep dive into the striped bass fishery and the fishing opportunities from shore here around the Cape and the islands. We really got into what Calvin does on a night in night out basis here from shore and took a deep dive into not only his strategy but his equipment as well.

You could consider it a bit more advanced look at angling here on Cape Cod, especially for Striped Bass. Along those lines, this podcast is going to be very similar. I am going to be absolutely tickled pink to introduce you to our guest here in a few short minutes, but it's going to be none other than the world-famous Patrick Sebile and even a novice fisherman will know the last name, Sebile. It's synonymous with not just lure making, but also Patrick holds numerous world records for the largest fish ever landed in a variety of different species.

Patrick has been fishing since he was eight years old. That's pretty much the earliest memory he has as a child and he's been blessed and fortunate enough to fish around the globe and we are blessed and fortunate enough to have him right here on today's podcast.

Now the focus and topic of today's show is going to be fishing braided line.

It's something Patrick is extremely passionate and knowledgeable about, and we're going to talk about the pros and cons of braided line, especially fishing up here in the Northeast. We're going to hear a little bit about Patrick's adventures from around the globe and also take some of that knowledge and apply it right here for those of us on Cape Cod.

Patrick is one of the most accomplished anglers literally in the history of fishing. He's an unparalleled award-winning designer of innovative fishing lures, rods, reels, and pretty much anything fishing gear related. Patrick, it is an honor and a pleasure to welcome you to the podcast, my friend.

Patrick Sebile:
Well, thank you so very much and I'm so happy and proud also to join and to reach, thanks to you, a lot of my dear friends around Cape Cod and [inaudible 00:03:05], which is one of my favorite region in the world, I believe a number of people know about that.

Kevin Collins:
Now, Patrick, the topic of today's discussion is going to be fishing braided line, and that's something that your friends up here on Cape Cod and in the Northeast predominantly are always doing. So let's dive right into that topic. What can you tell us about, I'll say, the pros of fishing braided line, especially up here on Cape Cod and in the Northeast?

Patrick Sebile:
Sure. Well, definitely the pros of braided line are a smaller drag into the air, a thinner diameter than typical mono lines made of nylon lines that improve the casting distance. There's less drag into the wind. As we all know very often the best fishing days are when it's windy, so the distance is improved.

In the vast majority of cases, the action of the lure is also improved thanks to the use of braid because when the angle of the reel, when the angular gives twitches or jerks with the rod tip itself, the braid helps to translate better of those movement to the lure. And you can see just if you use a walking the dog bait, if you try a mono which also sinks and you try a braid, which typically floats and up no stretch, typically you have a much better action with less movement from the rod tip.

Then the next point is you feel the bites much better. And when you have finicky bites, sometimes a braided line helps you to feel better a little bite better than a regular mono line.

The hook set also is typically better because, again, having no stretch the braid translates much better to the hook setting action of the angler. Another point is that braid allows you to fish with a lighter weight, because you have less drag not just in the air, but also less drag in the water.

So when you have, say, a 0.5 millimeter mono, then you have a certain amount of drag from the water, especially when you have current, like in the Cape Cod Canal, or when you fish on beaches with rip tides and waves.

Braid also allows you to fish lighter with the same pound test line, than if you were to use mono. So that's a pretty good number of benefits. You also increase the capacity of your fishing reel spool. By using braid instead of mono you can increase line capacity by a lot - like 50% to 100% the capacity of your reel. For the common catches this doesn't matter a lot, but when it comes to a very large fish, having more line on your spool give you a better chance to succeed in your fight on a very large fish.

Even when you fish stripers and you hook a very unexpected large fish in a very strong current, you might appreciate having that extra amount of line.

Most braided lines float, which is another benefit most of the time. Say you want to drift your lure when you have an outgoing tide. Lets say you are fishing an inlet and you want to let your lure drift far away so you can reach a distance that not even a cast with braid will allow.

Well, when you let the lure drift, having the braided line floating ontop also means you are much less likely to snag the line itself under the water on rocks and stuff like that.

There are just so many benefits. One thing I didn't mention, is the fact that you can use a much heavier braided line, and it is still going to be thinner than mono. That indeed is a big help because when you fish around structure like big rocks, and especially if you have waves and current, then having that extra strength in your line will allow you to fight harder and take the fish away from the danger zone. That's definitely a very good thing.

But hey Kevin, let me ask you this. Are you aware of why braided lines were invented, those that we are using today for fishing?

Kevin Collins:
No. I would love to know though. Can you enlighten us?

Patrick Sebile:
So this is quite interesting. Especially when you think about the terrible war in Ukraine and we hear about those missiles and the use of GPS to achieve precise bombing - well go back a few decades and there was no such technology. Believe it or not, braid was designed to be used for bombs.

The idea was in the '50s, '60s, and early '70s that you would have a platoon of soldiers. One of them will make the calculation of the very specific spot where the bomb will need to explode, and then you will make the calculation of the curve in the air that the bomb will go, including the fact that the bomb itself will have some drug in the air, but also the line attached behind the bomb. And these bombs were constructed similar to detonating a grenade. I'm sure you've seen at least in movies, those grenades where the soldier must pull a pin off?

Kevin Collins:
Yes. Exactly.

Patrick Sebile:
That starts a chemical process inside the bomb and a few seconds later it will explode. Well, these bombs were based on the same principle, but of course there was nobody flying magically behind the bomb to pull that little pin. That's why the braid was developed. They were going into the field with a huge spool that might have 30 or 40 kilometers of line so that they can cut the right amount of line. Most of those bombs were to be flown under 600 meters to 800 meters away.

I don't want you to think that braid was used to send a missile 30 kilometers away, but those spools were that huge so they could cut the right amount of line. When the bomb was used and flown in the air, at a certain point there were pulling points in the braid, which was attached of course on one end to the pin at the back of the bomb. This way the bomb will be able to explode at the right spot (and especially just above the spot) which was the most efficient way to kill soldiers.

And that patent was actually a patent from a German company. By the time the patent became obsolete (along with the GPS patent) for army use, both were quite advanced. There was a German company named Comran, and someone in that company had the idea that maybe this kind of braid had some benefit for fishing. They brought the first ever braid design to market and they called it Chorus Strong.

That was the first fishing braid ever, and it just turned out that I was already a young dude in the fishing field at the time. I was 16 and I had already by that time won a number of tournaments. I was a bit sponsored by different brands and it turned out that the French distributor of Comran was based in Bordeaux, which was nearby where I'm from in France. I became one of the few, maybe a dozen of the first people in France who got some samples for a field test.

And like my other friends who field tested, we found that line to be strong and we were all very excited, because we saw a lot of potential. But remember one key thing, is that braid was initially made for one-time use. Cormoran used the braid as it was used by the army. It was very irregular, and there were many imperfections.

Sometimes you have a little ball of fiber and stuff like that on the line. You could have line that was 40 pounds strong and then there was one little spot that was maybe 18 pounds weaker. That's why in the field test we were, I would say 50/50, but we saw huge potential. It was definitely much thinner than mono, and we were able to make longer casts and all those things. But when we were spooling the line, we would have to look very closely, and sometimes we'd have to cut and make a knot, which is never good, but it was better than having that little ball of fiber sitting on the line.

After a few years there were a lot of unhappy people, because it was quite expensive, and sometimes it would break for no reason. Then later on companies here in the US, namely SpiderWire, were the first to come out with a braid that was properly and consistently braided. The modern braid has really followed that path.

So in conclusion, the army first used braid, and then a company in Europe had the idea to give it a a try for fishing. Unfortunately they didn't make changes to have the braid properly woven, which is when SpiderWire came into play. Now, as you know, there are dozens of brands. So that's the quickest story of how braid came into the fishing world.

Kevin Collins:
Now, I know you've probably got some stories, right? Fishing with braided line, and maybe some good, some bad.

Patrick Sebile:
Oh, yeah.

Kevin Collins:
Tell us a few.

Patrick Sebile:
I started to guide in Africa back in 1986. My main target for a few years was a fish that's named the Meagre. The first few years when fishing there in Africa and guiding for the fish, we were mostly using 30 pound test mono. The reel of preference back then for us was the Mitchell 498, which is a big reel, with a big spool, and a big diameter.

We were able to cut exactly 300 meters of 30 pound mono, which at the time was about 0.45 to 0.5 millimeter in diameter. For the average fish of 20, 25, 28, or 30 kilo that was all good. But here and there we would hook a larger fish, whether it was a Meagre or a shark, a big ray or a big Lear fish (which is from the jack family and is a super powerful fish). We would be chasing these bigger fish along the shores of Safa, Morocco, and 300 meters of line was not enough. We got spooled a number of times.

Once braid became better and better, literally with the same 30-pound line, we were able to spool about double, or 600 yards of 30-pound line. That was the first step, but then little by little, I realized I wanted to be able to have more of a duck fight with the bigger fish. I realized that 30 pound was a bit too light to really properly fight the fish.

Eventually I was able to move to 50 pound. Really, when you go from 30 pound to 50 pound, it's a huge difference. You can pull really hard. You can use your weight to pull on the rod, not just your arms. You can let your back kind of fall backward. So when you pump on the fish, it's no longer just your arms. You can really pump in a progressive way.

Don't let yourself fall suddenly, but you can let your body fall backward. When you have a really big fish that's far away from the beach, it really helps you fight the fish and work the fish closer and closer to you. By moving to 50 pound braid, I was still able to have about 400 yards, but 50 pound mono was a bit short of 200 yards, and that was definitely not enough.

That really came as big revolution, and even more so once I started to move south and go into Sub-Saharan countries like the Ivory Coast. That is where I found fish that were much, much, stronger, and much more powerful than the Meager. For any of you who have caught weak fish, think about that. If you want to compare say a five pound, six pound weak fish to the same weight blue fish, with the same gear, of course, you know that the blue fish will be much, much harder and give a much better fight. I am not playing down the weak fish, as it is a fantastic fish. I love to fish them like I love to fish for Meagre, but some fish are just much more powerful.

My first cubera snapper was a 42 kg beast. That's about 90 pounds, from the beach. Man, that was an incredible fight. I remember fighting that fish and feeling like, "Wow, I've never encountered something that fights like this before," and I had already caught very large fish at that moment in time, but they were different species that weren't as strong. The braid was definitely a big, big benefit for me in most of those situations. I say most, because it's not all pluses with braid.

One of braid's weaknesses is the friction. When you fish in a place that has a lot of rocks, and I'm not saying just some rocks, but I'm speaking about when you fish from a cliff and stuff like that where your line is more likely to touch the rocks, braid can be cut so much more easily than mono. That's why in certain situations in order to have the best of both worlds, some of my reels are spooled in a way that I have mostly braid on the back and then mono on top.

So the fighting area of the line, if you like, the short fighting length of line was made of mono. But then if there was a big rush from a big fish, at least as a backup, there was a lot of line thanks to the use of braid.

So you see, sometimes the answer is not just, is it mono or is it braid? Sometimes putting together mono and braid on your spool makes a lot of sense.

Kevin Collins:
Yeah, that's amazing, Patrick. I never even would've thought to do that. That's a really brilliant idea, and something that you probably came up with through a couple of hard lessons, fish that got away.

Patrick Sebile:
Oh yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Kevin Collins:
Now, taking all this knowledge that you have and applying it, on all these different continents that you've fished on, with species that you've targeted and records that you hold, I think one thing that's interesting for people to listen to you talk about next, is once you've made the selection of your line for fishing up here on the Cape, and let's say you're going to fish braid over mono, you really have to be careful in caring for your line,  and making sure there are no weak spots. We spoke about how braid can fray very easily, and how it can chafe when fishing boulder fields and whatnot. Can you talk a little bit about caring for your line, caring for your gear, checking and making sure that you're fishing at full capacity and that you don't have weak spots?

Patrick Sebile:
Yeah, that's a very important point. Actually, I was on Cape Cod about a month ago, and a couple of mornings I fished with Ryan, and actually I hooked a striper that felt like a decent fish but the braid broke, like 15 yards above the lure. So at some point I didn't pay attention and the braid probably touched the rocks, and I didn't see it.

Very often not checking our braid is a weakness we all have. We prefer to not think about it and just keep fishing. But it just takes a little time to do. For example, when you are fighting a fish, or even just reeling in your lure, the line makes a little V on top of the water. Believe it or not, just that little V shape on top of the water is sometimes enough to have a fish, like a teeny bluefish, come and bite.

So if that fish bites then the braid is cut right away, and well okay there's no doubt. But the problem is sometimes this happens and they just barely touch the braid with their teeth. Then you have a teeny weak point. This happens in the northeast with bluefish, and it can happen with Spanish mackerels in the South. It's happened to me a number of times in my life and in my career of fishing.

One of my specialties in Africa was targeting giant tiger sharks. I was living back then in Guinea-Bissau, which is one of the very small countries in Africa, which actually has the largest archipelago in Africa with 78 islands. That's a huge archipelago. You have a huge estuary, and right there you have big schools of jacks and giant tarpons, and you have those tiger sharks.

Several times it happened to me or to my customers while fighting a shark for one to three hours. I mean the average tiger shark was five to 600 pounds, on average. So they were big fish and most of the time we're fishing with 50 pound mono or 80 pound mono. Only some anglers would go with 130 pound and very big baits for giant sharks. Several times while fighting the shark, suddenly you see a two pound cousin of the Spanish mackerel that we have here in the US coming on the top towards that V. I saw it with my own eyes.

The Spanish mackerel just close their mouth on the V, thinking maybe it's a very teeny fish that makes that little V. And then click, boom, cut. So again, when it's clearly cut, well okay, you lost the fish or you lost at least your line, the leader, the bait, maybe the lure, but it's a clear cut and you can't do much against that. But when they just touch a little bit and you don't know and maybe one hour later, maybe 10 days later, maybe next year, if you don't change your braid, which you don't need to change too often actually, then suddenly at one point you have that big fish, you have a lot of pressure, much more than the average fish you are catching, and that's where the weak point gives up.

So really what we should all do, and again, I'm not trying to say I'm good at this all the time, like everybody, I don't think about it all the time, but here and there unspool your spool and look very closely at the line. Don't just reel it very fast, bring it back on the spool, but really slow enough that you can look. And if you find a weak point and you can see the weak point (if the fibers are a bit fuzzy then that that's weak point) don't mess with it.

Cut deep into the spool. You can make some knots that work well enough. Double uni knots, which means you make a uni knot on both ends of the two ends of that line once you cut it, and they come against each other and you pull that very, very tight, and then you can cut the excess line and still cast reasonably well.

Again, if it's deep into the spool, if it's close enough from the end, which it is most of the time, then just get rid of that piece of line. Don't fish with braid that has a weak spot because it will always give up on you when you really don't want it to give up on you.

Kevin Collins:
That's great advice, Patrick. And another thing I want to pick your brain on is I know you mentioned you do get a chance from time to time to get back here on Cape and you had a chance to fish with Ryan, which sounds like an awesome time.

Patrick Sebile:
Yeah, we did.

Kevin Collins:
So just give some more tasty morsels if you can, of what are some of your favorite, I'll say fish to target up here, methods that you use, lures to fish with braid, just some general tips and information to give folks here on Cape from your past experience, I guess?

Patrick Sebile:
Yeah, I mean to be honest, I come to the Cape 95% of the time for striped bass, whether I target them from the shore or from the boat. But here's what I think is the most important part of today's podcast and it's where I want to go because really this is where it's going to help every angler - and I'm not kidding when I say every angler. It's to be aware of something that started as a marketing proposal and now has become the norm.

Back in the early 70s, one brand (I'm not going to name brands just to avoid trouble, I don't want people to think I'm on a podcast to make any mess). But one brand came with the idea that they will put a stronger line on their spool than what was advertised. And because of that, their thinking was, anglers will realize, oh the line of this brand is much stronger than similar lines from other brands.

That was their approach, but here's what happened, and I'm talking as an eye-witness of this. Today, and we only have this issue in North America is that the braid pound tests that are written on the spool are not the true strength, not by far. The real pound test is much heavier than what is labeled on the package.

A bit earlier I was speaking about that Meagre, the fish I started to fish and guide for in Africa. Again, the average fish was 20 to 30 kg and was a fish that you could catch. When you know how to catch the Meagre, you can target the striped bass and vice versa. If you are used to fishing for striped bass and someday you want to fish along the shores of the Sahara desert in Morocco, everything you know about how to catch a striper back home on Cape Cod, you can apply to the Sahara Desert shores and you can target that Meagre, which is a beautiful fish. Look online for meagre M-E-A-G-R-E or Corvina. There's several names.

My average line was 30 pounds for those fish, and I mentioned why I went to heavier lines because there were bigger fish around. Many people who are listening to this podcast I think will say, "Hey, that's the type of line I'm using". Well, actually very likely it was not, and I will tell you why. If you take today's 10 pound test braid, it's written 10 pound test on the spool here in the US, and you send a sample of that line to the IGFA, which is the nonprofit organization that handles all the world records, they have spool machines that are proven and reliable for reference.

An actual spool of 10 pound braid in the US is actually 27 pound. Basically that puts 10 pound US braid in the 30 pound category. 10 pound is actually 27 pound, 40 pound is 70 pound. The more you go up in the number the less difference there is, but it's still huge. 50 pounds is 92 pounds. That's why I like to know the real pound test of the line because then you can make the proper decision.

Do you want to cast with what's called 10 pound test braid? Most people will think, oh, no. Well, actually, if you don't have too much of a strong current, then 10 pound braid is fantastic. A spool of that 10 pound test braid can be great, especially when you fish from the beach. Now the 10 pound braid might be a bit weak at the moment of the cast, so you may want to put a headshot line (which means you want to tie a piece of say 30 or 40 pound US name braid at the end of that) which is about one and half to two times the length of the rod.

This way when you are going to cast, you'll be sure that that heavier braid will have made at least five to 10 turns around the spool of your reel. When you cast, you have the benefit of that much stronger braid so you can cast very hard with a two or three ounce lure, for example. You'll be able to have that up cast that allows the rod to fly away a long distance. But once that head shot is gone from the reel, you have a line that's much thinner so you cut through the air fantastically, and you increase your distance a lot. So thanks to that you cover more water, as a result, you typically have more bites. Also when you set the hook on the fish, you have much more fun because you have less of a dog fight type of relationship.

Now does it make sense all the time? Surely not. If you fish in the Cape Cod Canal where it's both deep and you have rocks along the shore, and you have that powerful current and the chance to hook a very large fish. You want to fight that fish in a way where you can pull hard. That's why I think the vast majority of people in the Cape Cod Canal are using 40 pound. I believe that's the one pound test that's the most sold by the stores in the area. I think the reason is that people felt that, hey, that's the kind of pound test I feel good about using, that I can pull hard on the fish with.

But when you do pull on the fish, you think you're pulling on 40 pound test, when actually you're pulling on line that's almost twice as strong, more like 70 pound-just to give you an idea. When I guided for tarpon in Africa, I was lucky that the place had the biggest tarpon in the world, and most of the time we're using 30 and 50 pound. So you see how much power you have when you use 40 pound braid to target stripers that are mostly in the 10 to 25 pound range. Is it wrong to use 40 pounds? I'm not saying that because again, when you fish with very heavy current, you don't want the fight to last too long. You don't want the fish to keep drifting in the current and go far away from you, because you may tangle with five or 10 other anglers. You want to overpower the fish, but at least it's good that you know you're not using 40 pounds, but that you're actually using 70.

If you fish next to the bottom with buck tails and jigs, and the bottom is very snaggy, well yes, using an 80 pound braid (remember 70 pound in the US is labeled 40 pounds) then that makes sense because you may want to hook those fish and pull very hard to take them away from the rocks. If you fish upstream of bridge pilings and suddenly you find a school of massive 40 pound stripers, well definitely you want to be in a position where you can fight those fish very hard, because you know they have a certain amount of strength, and their big body is going to have huge drag in the current.

In that case, you may want to have an even heavier line, like 65 pound braid, which actually is 110 pounds-not because of the fish, but because of the conditions, the strong current, the bridge piling etc.

Quickly again, 10 pound test braid in the US is actually 27 pounds. I back up what I say because I worked for a year for one of the largest companies in the world and when the line was spooled for the US market, that braid will say 10 pounds. When it will be spooled for the European or Japanese or Australian market, then that same line will have a sticker that will say 30 pound class or 25 pound class. Remember, 40 pound is 70 pound, 65 pound is 110 pounds etc. I think it's really important to know this.

If you fish in an open area, especially from the beaches or from a boat, and if there's not a lot of rocks, if the current by itself is not an issue, then you can enhance your action, and make longer casts, feel the bite better, and have less drag in the wind, and less drag in the current, by using a thinner line because it's already strong enough. 10 pound braid that's actually 27 pound is plenty enough in many situations where the water is clean and free of obstructions. Now you fish the canal, you fish in a place with a lot of rocks, then using 30 or 40 pound, which is actually 55 to 70 pound braid will make more sense.

Then if you fish in very, very difficult areas like next to bridges with very strong current, then it's not crazy to use up to 60 pound, which is actually 110 pounds. But just at least be aware that you are overpowering the fish.

If you want to have fun on those schoolies in places you know that the chance to hook a big fish is close to none, then I will tell you this. Try a very thin line, like a six pound in the US because actually that's a true 20 pound. You will have so much more fun if you target schoolies with 6 pound US braid than probably what you're using now, even if you use a 12 or 15 pound, which is much, much thicker.

So that's a long explanation but at the end of the day, that's the thing I really wanted to share with you in this podcast.

Kevin Collins:
That's amazing, Patrick. Before I let you go, I just wanted you to talk a little bit about what you're up to now. I know A Band of Anglers is very near and dear to your heart, and is something you're really passionate about. Talk a little bit about that and the other things that you're into now.

Patrick Sebile:
Sure. Thank you for the opportunity. Actually back in 2017, my seven and a half years with Pure Fishing ended and I decided to come back with a new company and new brands. And this time I created several brands.

Ocean Born, which actually is an homage to the Northeast because Ocean Born comes from the nickname that was given on a baby girl who was born on the ocean in the middle of a pirate attack from a boat that was coming from England or Ireland, I'm not sure, to Boston. Her nickname became Ocean Born Mary. You can look online, you will see the story. There's a book. You can even visit the house where she lived.

Hyper Elastics are great for black sea bass and I also have Spool Tek and Engage, so there's five brands there. With A Band of Anglers, the idea was really to have a company that reflects my lifestyle and that's why the logo of A Band of Anglers is actually my daughter, my son and myself fishing together. That's very dear to me.

Kevin Collins:
Well, Patrick, it was a privilege getting to chat with you today on the podcast. I know you're going to be a regular as we go through this season here. We're going to try to pick a new topic each month and have you engage like you did today. But man, I am just overwhelmed by the amount of knowledge you just passed on to us and I am extremely thankful for it, and we look forward to having you back on the show.

Patrick Sebile:
That's fantastic. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Again, a big hello and thank you to all my dear friends in the Northeast and especially on Cape Cod, which I dearly love.

Kevin Collins:
My thanks to our podcast guest today, Patrick Sebile, and man, what a conversation we just had with Patrick. He is just a wealth of expertise and knowledge. It's almost overwhelming the amount of experience he has to share with us. I sure hope everybody enjoyed today's conversation with Patrick and as we just mentioned, we're going to have him here as a regular monthly contributor on this podcast. Can't wait to see what next month has in store. That's going to put the wraps on this edition of the My Fishing Cape Cod Podcast. As always, please don't hesitate to reach out either on the podcast thread or in the forum with any ideas or suggestions for future conversations with Patrick. But for now, this is your host, Kevin Collins, signing off and until we chat again in a couple of weeks, tight lines and take care.

Speaker 1:
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