Braid is the definitive choice for float fishing by virtue of mendability and being able to keep a straight-line presentation between the rod tip and the float. Have never tried braid on a spinning reel... just doesn't seem right to me. The one thing I do notice for all of you slip bobber fans is that the braid can be abrasive and will eventually groove the tube on your floats and eventually they will not slip along the mainline as well as they used to... in fact the grooves may even trap the line altogether. Anybody have a good solution for touching up grooved floats?

On another note, allow me to share some observations about braid from this past salmon-trolling season. I ran four different brands of braid (Whiplash, PowerPro, Spiderwire Stealth, and Tuf XP) in my boat this fall... trolling a dropper, FishFlash, and plug cut herring. I run premium Sampo BB swivels on all my FishFlash, and line twist is still an issue. The coarser braids like PowerPro and Tuf XP were a little more resistant to twist. The smoother Stealth and Whiplash have less "body", tend to flatten like dental floss, and were much more prone to twist. With the rods in the holders, you could actually see the twist developing in the lines throughout the day... kind of like party streamers that you twist to decorate for your kid's birthday. After cleaning the boat, I spent every evening running out the lines in my driveway and manually untwisting them for the next outing.

I will stick to the smoothe braids in the river for backtrolling plugs, backbouncing bait, and fishing floats from a baitcaster.

For trolling whirly things like FishFlash and herring, it's PowerPro for me.