Fishing line care and storage

Line is not only worn out by fish. Nylon ages by itself — from water and sunlight — and a reel that spent the winter on a balcony can let you down on the first bite. Care here comes down to a few simple things.

Nylon ages without your help

Monofilament is made of nylon, and nylon absorbs water and is degraded by ultraviolet. Line left a season in direct sun loses part of its strength even if it was never fished.

None of this shows from the outside. You test it differently: take a hand-length piece and pull. Fresh nylon stretches and comes back; old nylon parts quietly and without resistance.

Braid ignores the sun but abrades

Braid has a different weakness. Ultraviolet does it almost no harm, but it wears through against rings, rock and mussel shell. What wears is not the whole spool but the first few tens of metres — the part that passes through the rings most often.

So braid is not thrown away whole: you rewind it end for end, and the worn section ends up underneath.

How to store it

Three conditions, and all three say the same thing: dark, cool, dry. Keep the spool in a closed box or a sleeve, away from a window and away from a radiator. After salt water rinse the tackle in fresh — salt stays on the line and speeds up wear on the rings.

The same rules apply to the rest of the tackle; the routine for a rod is covered separately in rod care and storage.

The line is cut by the tackle, not the fish

The commonest cause of a sudden break is not old line but a chip in a rod ring or on the line roller. A crack the width of a hair works like a blade and saws through the line in a few casts.

The test is simple: draw a nylon stocking or a cotton bud through the ring. If a fibre catches, the insert has cracked, and it is the insert you replace, not the line. The check takes a minute and is done once a season.

When to replace it

The trigger is condition, not the calendar. Replace the line if it has visibly paled or gone cloudy, if you can feel roughness, if it parts at the knot under a load it used to take, or if it comes off the reel as a spring and will not straighten.

The last of those is a nylon trait: that spring is what is called memory, and old line has more of it. It is covered in the article on monofilament line.