Well, since rigging up a spinning rod with braid, I have caught a handful of fish on it. ANd here's my feedback so far.
First, I have to say that I am really liking this braid overall. It behaves nicely and has given me no trouble at all.
The hooksets are great, as is the sensitivity. I had forgotten how sensitive braid is compared to mono!
On my first outing with it last weekend, I landed one bass on it. Getting a good hook set is effortless. The leader I used worked great.
Today I used it again in another tourney. It was a tough day, with no limits caught. I had 4 fish, which was good enough to win it
But regarding the braid, I used that setup to catch 3 of the 4 keeper fish I caught as well as one short.
The fist fish I caught with it was a LMB under 2 lbs. I landed the fish with no incidents, checked the hook for sharpness, checked the leader to make sure it wasn't frayed and then started fishing again.
A short tie later I made a cast and the leader, shaky head and worm all went bye bye
The braid and leader came apart, so apparently it was a knot failure. I was just thankful that it didn't happen while playing that first fish
So in light of the fact that I didn't have my spool of fluoro leader with me, I opted to tie the next shaky head directly to the braid with a Palomar knot. I wasn't too sure about doing this, since I was fishing a small rock pile and I know how much braid and rocks don't mix well. But I figured I'd give it a go.
A while later I felt another bite and landed a keeper smallie. And a short time later I got another bite and landed my biggest LMB of the day, a fat 2 1/2 lber. that had the tail of another fish sticking out of its throat
Through the rest of the tourney I only landed one more short bass.
So my experience today made me love the braid even more. But I'm also troubled by the separation of the braid and leader. I obviously did something wrong when tying on fresh leader last night while prepping my equipment. I
was in a bit of a hurry last night when tying that knot (Alberto Knot), so maybe that's why it failed. It still bothers me, though, so I will make sure I go back and watch the video again to make sure I tied it right.
I will definitely keep working at this because having braid on this rod is the reason I bought the rod, to be used primarily for shaky head setups.
Oh, and this is my first season throwing the shaky head setup. So far, I really, really like it!!