[Bill McIntyre]

I agree that a float line is so much more visible in open water. However, he was not offshore. I believe he was on the outside of a kelp bed relatively near shore. Boats charge up and down the coast or next to our islands and either don't notice floats, don't know what they are, or are actually attracted to them when they don't know what they are.

But you are also admitting that you don't even use the floats offshore, and neither do most of us for a similar reason. We are running from one floating kelp paddy to another, jumping in and looking to see if there are fish, and then moving on to the next paddy. It takes too much time and too much trouble to put lines and floats in, then get them back out. A few days ago I had two guys with reels and one with a float line, and the contrast was dramatic. It took the one guy so much more time, and then I had to avoid running over his line and tangling it in the prop.

I had a special experience last week that would not have been helped by a float line. I saw a kelp paddy and turned toward it. I noticed a big boat coming down swell toward me, but it was a clear sunny day, and I assumed that once he saw that I was on the paddy, he would veer off. I took it out of gear next to the paddy, and this boat went by about 15 feet off my stern at full speed. We looked into the back of his cabin and saw a gun straightening up after apparently being bent over doing something. I guess he was on autopilot and never even saw us. If my divers had been in the water, he could have run right over them. Or if he barely missed them, he could have picked up their float lines at 25 knots.

Admittedly, this was a freak occurrence and should not be the basis of a decision on reels vs. float lines, but it is one more example of a case where having a float line might be worse than a reel.