With no ice to fish on, get an early start preparing for open-water fishing

It seems that I must have blinked and our ice fishing season disappeared that quickly.

It’s a tough break for those guides and tackle and bait dealers who were counting on a much longer season. That said, we all need to get our open water gear ready much faster than we may have been planning.

Rods and reels are extremely important, but the foundation of our fishing equipment is our line. The proper line with which to attach our baits is critically important. The wrong line or the wrong knot, causes more lost fish than any other factor I can think of.

Shopping for fishing line can be an overwhelming experience. There are hundreds of brands available, but fishing line can basically be broken down into three basic categories: monofilament line, braided line and fluorocarbon line.

Fishing line is rated by its strength and is listed as test strength in pounds. You can catch a 10-pound fish on 2-pound test line, but that is no guarantee. I use 65-pound line for muskie fishing, even though I’ll never see a fish nearing that weight, ever. For basic local river, lake and pond fishing, I think that 10-pound test line is adequate, in general.

Monofilament revolutionized the line business when it arrived on the scene, a generation ago. It was light, thin and very invisible in the water. Mono made the old-fashioned line we used to use appear more like rope or heavy twine. Mono’s drawback is that it tends to stretch, making it harder to feel bites. Mono is inexpensive, making it the favorite line for thrifty fishermen.

Braided line is expensive but virtually unbreakable. It is thinner than mono. Braid is tough to use when trolling. If you are trolling and you hook into a snag, like a log, something has to give, and the odds are that your line isn’t going to be the loser. You have a strong chance of losing a rod in this situation. Other than trolling, braid is perfect for most situations.

Fluorocarbon line is invisible in most water. It’s incredibly strong and it doesn’t stretch. It’s the best line for almost every application. The reason that fluoro isn’t used exclusively is its cost. Fluoro is darned expensive.

So now that you know the pluses and minuses for the basic types of lines, what should you pick? Most of my daily use fishing rods and reels are spooled up with braid. The expense is offset by the fact that you don’t need to respool often because the braid lasts nearly forever.

One drawback for braid is that it is not available in a clear color, making it easier to spook fish when they spy it in the water. That is the reason that I always tip my braid with a 6-foot length of clear fluorocarbon as a leader. It’s the perfect set-up for most of my fishing activity.

When you use braid, you need to put some mono on your reel so that the braid doesn’t slip when you are fighting a fish. I know this sounds like a pain in the posterior, and it is, but it is absolutely necessary.

Then you’ll need to know how to tie a back-to-back uni-knot to attach the fluoro leader to the braid. It’s an easy knot to find if you Google it. It’s the only knot I know of for tying two different weights or thicknesses of line without failure. It may be easy to tie, but it is very difficult to tie, and it takes practice to master it.

I recommend plenty of off-water practice to master this knot.

• Daily Herald Outdoors columnist Steve Sarley can be reached at sarfishing@yahoo.com.