Science: 101 Uses for Fishing Line

 

Monofilament fishing line might have taken a back seat to fluorocarbon and braid among most modern bass anglers these days, but there is still a time and a place for it in certain circumstances. Those instances might not be exactly what you’re thinking of though.

I was browsing through a bunch of research papers online for this weeks topic, when I came across an unusual paper related to monofilament line. I started keeping a closer eye out for similar papers, and lo and behold, I found several. While we bassers might have a soft spot for mono in our tackle rigging and bass tourney game plans, it seems the scientific world has come up with other creative uses for the stuff. Here are a couple interesting examples of actual published studies I came across using monofilament fishing line for purposes other than fishing.

• Effective Tick Removal With a Fishing Line Knot –According to this study, it turns out that 8″ of 10lb. or less monofilament line, when tied into a simple overhand knot and placed over and around the body of an embedded tick, and then slowly tightened, can be used to safely lift and remove the tick and its sucking parts with just a few tries.
• Atraumatic intracutaneous skin closure with self-made fishing line suture compared to commercial thread – Turns out your regular old nylon monofilament line sutures wounds just as good as the fancy medical stuff, and at a cost 20x less than the high dollar stuff. You might want to find out if your  surgeon is a big fishing fanatic or not the next time you have to have a few stitches placed. Don’t freak out if he pulls a pony spool of Stren or Trilene from his scrub pockets.
• A Lightweight Imaged Based Bridge Inspection System Using Fishing Pole, Fishing Line and Fisheye Camera – This one might make you think twice before driving over any bridges in Taiwan. Seems they’ve come up with a low cost bridge inspectiuon system, whereby a fancy camera is attached to fishing line and a couple poles, and suspended over the side of a bridge. At that point, the operators get a good groove going and swing the camera underneath the span, where everything is recorded and later downloaded and checked, assuring that the bridge is in good working order – honest!
  

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