When I was younger I used to do a lot of adventure fishing where I would carry my gear and a kayak through the bush into remote lakes. At one point I found myself breaking my line multiple times a trip on hook sets, on the cast, and while fighting fish! This should not have happened as I was mostly fishing for small largemouth and using 20 - 40 lb braided line at most times. I struggled for a while to figure out what was causing this to happen: I made sure there were no knicks on my reel or in the rod eyelets and even swapped out multiple spools of line thinking I had gotten a defective roll from the manufacturer.
Eventually I found out what was causing all my problems. The constant moving of rods into and out of vehicles, into the kayak, and hitting of branches while walking through the bush was putting small cuts into my line! The solution to my problems was a simple $10 piece of gear; the rod sock! Adding a rod sock to my rods while travelling and moving it about protected the line from any small bits of damaged I was doing to it before and my break offs stopped right away. Rod socks also protect the tip and eyelets of the rod and make storage easier.
There are a number of cheap options available on Amazon for rod socks at $5-8 a piece. Our favourites have an elastic band on the end of them so that they can be put around the reel so that the sock stays on securely when travelling.
Comments