If you fish most channel cat waters in the United States, 12- to 17-pound-test line is about all you need. If you fish places like the Red River, or places wherever there can be numerous fish that run 15 to 30 pounds, I recommend using 30-pound line. Of course, as the fish get bigger, so should your line.

Billed as the most visible line on the market, new Stren Catfish Mono is also easy to spot. Available in 10- to 40-pound test, the strong, abrasion-resistant line glows in daylight and under a black light.

Monofilament can be extruded from different materials, but nylon is by far the most common and popular medium. Often, different varieties of nylon are blended together into co- and multi-polymers to produce varying degrees of stretch, strength, abrasion resistance and other important attributes.

While 50-pound monofilament may have greater abrasion resistance and have sufficient power to pull up a 100-pound catfish from the depths, most of these giant catfish have extraordinary speed and stamina. A big paraiba can strip 200 yards of line off a reel before you can get off anchor.

Examples for Selecting Fishing line

The braided line is considered the ultimate in strength but it's also quite visible, which is why this line is often used in combination with a fluorocarbon leader.

And a properly cleaned flathead (be sure to remove the yellow fat in the meat) is unquestionably the best tasting of all catfish. That great table quality is available only to anglers who catch flatheads or to those who can beg some of the clean, white filets.

Best Catfish Baits

• #2. Gizzard Shad.
• #3. White Suckers.
• #4. Skipjack Herring.
• #5. Stinkbait.
• #7. Bluegills.
• #8. Punchbait.
• #9. Chicken Livers.
• #10. Shrimp. You never run out of bait if a grocery store is near, and there's no denying their appeal to channel catfish, despite its absence in the natural diet.

In a nutshell, monofilament is a single filament of synthetic fiber. Monofilament is made by melting and mixing polymers. The polymer mixture is then extruded through holes, creating lines of various thickness.

In sports, monofilaments are used for making fishing lines and strings for tennis, badminton, squash, and racketball rackets. Monofilaments are used to make synthetic monoyarn used in weaving processes and synthetic ropes that are used in greenhouses, orchards, fences, construction, fastening, and so forth.

Monofilament is neutrally buoyant by nature and is effective in fishing topwater lures as well as lures which require a line to neither sink nor float, such as hard jerkbaits. Additionally, monofilament line has long been used for backing (A.K.A. "filler") for fishing reels.

The square of the transition moment is called the line strength. Oscillator strengths and Einstein coefficients of Zeeman components (i.e. of transitions between states) are proportional to their line strengths, or to the squares of their transition moments. The symbol generally used for line strength is S.