Addressing the problem of choosing a fault line under singlephase to ground of distribution network, we presented a new criterion based on analysis of the development of fault line selection and a method using wavelet packets. The feature frequency band, or the combined feature frequency bands of each line, in which the transient capacity current was concentrated was chosen for maximum energy. Based on the principle that the transient capacity current's energy of the fault line was larger than the that of normal lines, fault line selection can be carried out adaptively by contrasting the energy of the transient capacity currents of all lines in each chosen frequency band. The simulation results and spot testing data shows the proposed method can detect the fault line in distribution networks precisely and reliably.