hey guys, my experience with braided and spinning is the following. Just as a reminder i dont have much time to do spinning right (in the morning and sunset), and most of the time when i get a chance to go fishing i cast two rods for bottom and then spin too. So its not organized

but anyway.
Re braided, there is spiderwire that has excellent breaking strenght. And also powerpro. However you dont find them in Malta (or i dont know from where) and when I tried getting them of ebay I got a little screwed cause the box was of a .18 but then the line was a .40. Howver you can check the specs out for these lines. Quite impressive.
With braid, as you aplty said, its best to get a good mono as a first layer, then put the braid on it. Yet watch out that the mono is not too thick cause then the knot with a thinner braid is not strong and if a fish takes a lot of drag out (which is quite unlikely, but you never know) it gets problematic. Yet this also depends on the size of the spool. I use a shimano 2500 (the one with the fighting drag) and filled it with a .16braid and was quite ok. But watch out for the casts cause if its not a good braid it gets knotted.
Re the end bit, try get a florocarbon or floro coated line. Once again dont use a very thick line with a thin braid cause the knot gets difficult to do and will not be strong. With the .16, the max floro thinckness i used is a .30. Once you tie the florocarbon to the braid reel couple of rounds until you get one or two layers of the reel all florocarbon. once you do that you are sorted and can attach the lures to it.
Wanted to ask, do you use swivels at the end to attach the lures? I used to use the rapala ones but i think a direct knot is better. With the above set up I had landed a nice barracuda and lifted it quite a little since i was fishing off rocks. Yet the rod I use is a heavy spinning one, hence the rod could take it. With respect to the reel, what do you think of the importance of the ratio. The pros say it has to be a 5:1 but i never got the hand of how it works.
By the way, when the barras are small lets not all forget to try some catch and release
jean