Fishing: It's such a fine line

A lot of people I take out fishing cannot believe the amount of line and hooks I go through in a day's fishing. Every year I use some two-three thousand metres of line. In fact I've just purchased a spool of Penn line that is '1.8 km long'.

Your fishing line is like a plastic bag - stretch it enough and it gets very thin and breaks. The whole molecular structure and strength of the bag has changed and the same thing happens to your line when it gets snagged on the bottom and you break it off.

If you tie a hook back onto the line where it broke, the strength of the line at that point is probably less than 10 per cent of its original breaking strain.

When you do get stuck on the bottom, never try to break it off by pointing the rod straight up and down as this is point loading the rod and is one of the easiest ways of breaking it.

Often people hold the rod over their shoulder and walk away with it until the line breaks. What they've now done is damage the line on the spool of the reel. The pressure of the line being pulled down on the spool has cut into and crushed the end of the line which has weakened it.

When stuck, slacken the line off the spool and put the rod down, take a couple of wraps around your fist then break it out. Cut the line at the rod tip and pull the nylon on board and put it in the rubbish.

To fish with damaged line is not only risking a bust off, the chances of fish surviving are also slim.

Let's face it, the only thing between you and the fish is the line and fishing line is one of the cheapest components of your day's fishing.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY