Braid fishing line lubricant.

[Flat Top]

About 10 years ago or so I started lubing my braided line and rod guides with food grade silicone. The line seemed to last longer than before the lube was used and the line feed much smoother through the guides when casting. No weakness in the line or shock leader knot was exhibited, when respooling the reels the spool was clean...no rust or tarnish. Do any of you use a line lube and if so what do you use.

[jgp12000]

I have only sprayed "Reel Magic" on mono & it does appear to make things happen for the better. I spray the entire reel in a pinch.

[drumbum]

I wonder how many "armor all" their braid....

I may don a  guinea pig suit in the future,.....fer sighans an all

[jurelometer]

You might want to try a blind test to see if you are actually getting any casting improvement, and how long it lasts.  I don't think that the science is really on your side.   Putting a lubricant on a sticky plastic like a PVC coated fly line makes some sense, but modern braid is a different beast.

Here are some reasons why it doesn't seem to be a benefit:


1. UHMWPE (the stuff braid is made from) on ceramic inserts is an extremely low friction interface. There is not much room for improvement. It is possible that even clean lubricant will increase the coefficient of friction, since the non-lubricated surface pair is already ridiculously smooth.


2. Sliding  friction is a function of the amount of force pressing the surfaces together.  When the line is shooting through the guides on a cast, there is very little force forcing the  surfaces together.  The amount of friction occurring on the guides is very small compared to the friction of line on line leaving the spool, impacting the blank and sides of the guide frames and most importantly, the line and payload moving through the air (fluid friction).  Even a successful attempt to decrease a very small component of the overall friction is unlikely to yield a noticeable benefit.

 If you slathered on enough lubricant to change the surface of the line, it could change the amount of fluid friction (air resistance) during the cast, but this seems unlikely.

3.  Nothing sticks to UHMWPE.  That is why braid has a hard time even holding dye. It is impervious to many chemicals. If you found something with a solvent  in it that allowed it to penetrate the fibers, it would probably weaken them.  Any coating would not stay on the surface of the fibers where friction is occurring (it would rub right off),

4. Many braids come with a coating to help hold dye and make the line more manageable. It gets trapped between the fibers, but doesn't  last a long time (nothing sticks to UHMWPE). A lubricant is either not going to stick to the coating, or stick to it and change its properties, potentially for the worse.

5. Lubricants are likely to attract dust, grit, and other particles it comes in contact with.  It will help trap these contaminants in the gaps in the weave, where they will contribute to wear when the line is under tension.  Plus trapped contaminants that stick out past the surface of the line will increase the amount of friction.

6.  You now have to be look into the health and safety aspects of touching lubricated line, and the potential environmental impact of introducing the chemicals into the waters that you fish, especially small streams and ponds.

That is what I can come up with off the top of my head.

-J
 

[wfjord]

I think it's always best to keep braided lines dry.

As braids go, I get best casting results from spectra (PowerPro) on spinning reels if the reel is a modern one with a spool specifically designed for casting braids. On my older 1st and 2nd generation Penn Spinfishers I find that spectra braids will keep looping off the spool and loop around the drag knob if you don't stop the line from leaving the spool either the second the plug or bait hits the water or shortly before it hits the water.  The vast majority of my spinning reels are older Penn Spinfishers. I only have two modern spinning reels designed for braid, one of them being a Daiwa BG.

When I switched from Spectra PP to fused Fireline (Dyneema) on my older spinning reels the problem resolved itself. The original fused Fireline is stiffer, almost wire-like, but handled and casted far better on older spinning reels -- and line twist effects aren't nearly as noticeable.

On the other hand, Spectra (PP) naturally works like a charm on my baitcasters as the dynamics, of course (duh), are very different than on the older spinning reels.