We’ve been planning to do this test for a pretty long time. Finally, we assembled all of the sample lines just before COVID hit. So it all got shelved during lockdown and only reappeared on the radar in the middle of 2020.
At that point I hit up Gareth Williams from Brisbane’s Tackle Tactics to borrow some of his testing machines. Gareth recently acquired Platypus lines and as far as I know if the biggest braid manufacturer in Australia.
Gareth agreed, and after a few hiccups (which involved us taking out power to the entire TT operations while they were ultra-busy) we got the work done.
What are the results? Well, you’ll need to read on to find out, but I learned a lot about braid and braid testing along the way. And I’m happy to take y’all along on the journey.
Gareth summed it up pretty well on day one.
“Although braid has plenty of amazing properties, it’s all pretty poor when it comes to abrasion resistance - monofilament line will win that battle every day of the week. It’s why we tie leaders to the end of most braid setups. Abrasion resistance and to reduce visibility,” he said.
At the end of the day, there’s plenty of ways to test a braided line. We tested with the machinery that we had available. Other companies test different ways and other industries test different ways as well.
And we know that different anglers look for different properties in a line. Some want thinness, others abrasion resistance and others just want to spend as little money as possible to get the job done. We get all of that, which is why we’re aiming to rank the lines in plenty of different ways based on these preferences.
The first thing that stood out to me was that there’s no, one line that’s the best at everything. If there was a braid that was the cheapest, thinnest, most abrasion resistant, most supple and had amazing knot strength, then we’d all just buy that.
Guess what - it doesn’t exist - at least not yet.
There’s 24 lines in our test, which we think represent most of the braids on the market today. There were a few companies who declined to participate in the testing and we didn’t force the point.
Full article in October 2020 Fishing Monthly Magazine
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29 сен 2024