Line choice for casting jigs.

[mikechell]

This is going to be a lengthier posts ...
Yeah, I tried FC ... a few years ago when a friend wouldn't let me take no for an answer. He was so convinced I'd like it, I truly tried it with an open mind ... wondering if I was wrong.

The first thing I noticed was my casting distances were reduced by a noticeable amount.

The second thing that hit me was the memory. Although it didn't have as much as I remember mono having, it still tended to curl a bit. This was a great hindrance to me. When I am letting a weightless soft plastic sink on braid, I watch the line as it moves away from me. It's as slack as you can get it while still maintaining a "hook-set-distance" of rod position and slack. When I tried this same thing with the FC ... the curling of the line caused much more slack in the line.
With braid, and this technique, I feel every tic on the line ... I can even tell you if I am hitting weeds as it's falling. But I can also SEE a hit, as the movement of the line "hitches", or stops abruptly ... depending on the type of "take".
(I know I am not seeing a hit and falsely feeling it ... since I've felt hits when I've been glancing around at other things while the lure is falling)
With FC, and this technique, all I can see is the line curling. I am pretty sure I've missed hits. You compare braid and FC like a rope and steel ... okay, then the FC is a steel "slinky". If a fish takes the lure without truly moving it (the "stop" when watching braid"), then the curl will absorb that and no one will feel it.
I did try FC ... but I have braid on every rod I own now, except my fly rods. Braid is too limp to turn the fly over. Too often, the fly will just follow the fly line tip to the water, piling up the braid in front of it. Mono and FC work better in these situations, since the stiffness forces the fly up and over ... like a pole vault.