Fanie Crause wrote:
i was lucky enough to catch a very big one on a grinder. It was on a gosa. Cant tell you what grinder to get but would advise you to go like 120pnd braid leader.
When you are fishing for cracker you tend to get stuck a lot if you are throwing in the right areas..What ever line and leader you fish, it must be strong enough but when you get stuck, weak enough to break off at your terminal rig..and incase your hook gets stuck (and you have .8-1mm hook snood) and you need to break off to not leave lengths of 80lb+ braid tangled in the reefs which is a real hazard to wildlife and humans.. You cannot bite off that braid and you need a knife to free yourself if you get trapped in it, for wildlife it means death or loss of limbs. I've heard of sinker divers killed and I've seen enough seals, otters and birds etc maimed. The hazard of heavy braid knitting up in the reefs is real, HDPE does not break down like nylon or co-polymer and the HDPE braid is made from lasts forever and is chemically inert in the absence of UV light. The line left in the water doesn't break down into microplastics like mono as bad as that is, but makes a tangled ball of hazard all over the reef.
With mono, far more forgiving in the fight among the rocks and you can break off at your swivel if you want to and you've setup terminal rig right, or sinker if that is stuck and leave minimal line behind. With 0.55 mono you can pull as hard as you can against the bend of a rod unless you are a bodybuilder, and not break it but bust off easy enough on a straight stick when stuck..In braid days past, fishing heavy gear I have actually injured myself quite badly, cutting a muscle internally and missing out half a season, fishing 80lb braid and 120lb leaders and then getting hooks stuck and having to break off.
I caught my best cracker on a finnor lethal 60 spinner and an exage 11ft, with hmp 50lb braid mainline and 0.8mm mono (perline) leader and 0.7mm hook snood, I was trying on a beach for steenies with big sand prawn baits when a jumbo pulled me flat..I could let him swim on a clean beach but if I had hooked him in all the other places I've caught cracker, I would have lost him. I have not lost many but even with the heavy mono gear in really foul places I have lost medium fish. That said in those same foul foul places with shallow shelves of reef parallel to land and very difficult to land big fish from, I've caught my best steenie on the mono, having to fight him every step of the way in the sharpest bricks, on low tide, others wondered how the hell I got that fish out in that spot, with braid there'd be no way, with mono you can let the fish fight the bungee of the line and bend of the rod and lead him like a dog on a lead..with braid it is too direct for that and the moment it touches the rocks..cheers..
My mate fishes them on 20lb line in foul spots as his specialty, but on high quality mono, there no way you'd get those fish out in his spot on 20lb braid..He gets many fish over 10kg each year normally. Cracker generally you dont have to cast far, you need strong smooth drag and thick enough line for the rocks..stretchy line is a plus, no stretch does not help you..
Thanks to my mentors convincing me to switch and learn the gear. They still ask me "what did you loose today" when I visit after a fish, but also ask me what I caught too sometimes nowadays. I had a good new years, caught one strepie as the sun went down and slid him out. He got chowed. Same rod and rig I use for most my bait fishing including cracker and gallies..Gear is a few years old now, reel into its 6th season and rod was grootvis's old one. Dependable, long lasting, cheap by grinder standards and a spool of 600m of new line costs me 150 buckaroos. Suits me.