Ive caught one or 2 of the silver assassins. Lost plenty as well.
There's a lot more to it than the trace, but for the purposes of this thread let's stick to that. The area you fish in is key. The spots i fish is foul rocks with even more foul rocks under the water, and deep. You either have mussels, limpets, and big sections of redbait under water. Usually a combination, but the redbait pods are the worst. In the southern cape they can cover a reef, and easily be a 5m by 5m spot or more wall to wall. Nothing gets you stuck if you have a proud hook presentation like hooking into a arm size red bait pod. You will break off 95% of the time. If you are fishing proper tackle mussels and limpets etc not so much of an issue.
For the above kind of area you want the trace as short as possible. The one spot i fish has the kind of reef above, and further to the left i know there is a sandy spot where 2 reefs meet. The cast to that spot has a 40cm trace so it can move around. The one onto the reef has a much shorter trace.
2nd thing. I fish 80lb braid, .80 leader and a .70 hook trace. I'm a hook and hold cracker fisherman, others like to give it some line. For my way, if i do get broken off, it's just the hookline. The shorter that is, the better for the fish afterwards. You also dont break off leaders all over your favourite cracker spot in this manner. I've fished the same leader for a 5 day spell on more than one occasion in those spots.
If you fish on the sand with isolated reef spots like some of the arniston spots, or even to the right of Benekes at Hartenbos, you can also get away with a longer trace for better movement of the bait.
