KeenEyeMD Kronicles 2010 - Day 5

Day 5 was eerily similar to Day 3.... no kings for Team KeenEye.... again!

Noel and Katosan opted out of the "hot" king bite this morning for a halibut trip in the Inlet. We picked up Corey, a buddy of Noel's, to round out our team for the day.

The day started with high hopes at o'dark early with three rods, but even after an hour and a half of undisturbed water all to ourselves, the elusive Kenai king proved to be... well... elusive. Stopped by camp to witness the Riverbend guide fleet at the starting gate before making one last pass at Stewart's before heading down to tidewater. We ground out 7 hours without a king bite. You know, I've always said when the fishin's hard.... FISH HARDER!

The tidewater fleet was almost NON-existent, so that gave f4b a chance to polish up his backtrolling skills on the tiller without any pressure from the crowds. I think we kept Corey past his curfew... poor guy didn't realize what he was getting himself into.

After a little break, we hit the river again that evening with Noel and Katosan. f4b was rewarded at the Wall with another platinum Kenai coho that went in the box. Katosan got a rippin' king bite bouncin' the Wall as well, but the 50# red PowerPro parted on the hookset! ARGHHHHHHHHH! Gotta love gear failure.... NOT! Squandered the only king bite of the day! 50# PowerPro is officially retired from any Kenai duty from here on out!

Try a palomar knot on that Power Pro. Hasn't let me down yet. However, I use a mono tippet with braid as a shock absorber so that may be why it hasn't failed at the hook yet.

Palomar is my knot of choice... tied in a terminal Bimini loop to eliminate any tags and to create a double segment of line where it takes the most abuse in everyday use.

The 50# PP failed just a few feet in front of the reel.

There's really not much substance to 50# braid. Suspect it was inadvertently abraded by shuffling gear around/in/out/of the boat over the previous few days... stray hook point, edge of a snap, hook file, pliers. Who knows?

By comparison, there's a lot more meat in 65#... the stuff I usually spool on.

Bingo, 50lb braid is a waste of time. Had a handful of un-necessary breaks in the beginning years of braid, it's been 65 or 80 for me since...

Keith

Agreed. just put 60# PP on my Abu 6500 for the first time ever and it is rad. Nice and thick and easy to control. Definitely far better than the 40# I tried in the past. For a long time I went back to 12# UG because of the nice thick size and for some reason it never occurred to me to just put on the higher test PP. Also, doesn't slice floats as much. Lots of positives so far.

Only reason I went 50 was because we were spooling up some "smaller" Kenai reels.... Curado 300's and a Revo Toro 61 for bouncing eggs. Figured we could use the extra capacity... just in case.

Turned out to be more of a liability.

Besides the aforementioned break-off, we also snagged up hard and in the process of trying to break off, the 50# buried so deep and so hard into itself that it could NOT be extracted... at least not without destroying the line. That reel was out of commission for the rest of the trip!

Never again.... least not on the Kenai.

uhh, that reel's STILL out of commission because I didn't want to start cuttin, but after refreshing my memory on the 50# pp debauchery I'm getting out the box knife.