Its a premium brand with a premium price, but as I said to many of the destination anglers i’ve prepared and coached, you spend all that money on a trip don’t scrimp on line and quality hooks for your flys as they are the essential part of equipment that goes in front of the fish!!!
So this fluro is advertised as being softer than the ordinary Grand Max and it has more stretch, not a common trait of fluro.!
Im sure you all remember when you first fished fluro with a fast taper rod, (I still love the XP) but it was a big learning curve at Grafham for me, losing many fish to being snapped off with aggressive takes especially to my top dropper !
Learning to lubricate your knots and always cinching tight before fishing made loads of difference but a low stretch fluro is always subject to a shock snap break ! That’s why I never use fluro straight through for a tarpon leader and recommend ordinary nylon for GT fishing, its the same principle for all fishing.
So I thought I would try and make some comparisons to this line before using.
First thing is its the same diameter for the same braking strain of normal Grand max,
It does seem softer than Grand max but not as soft as a new favourite Seaguar Soft Plus.
Riverge will still be my go to for those windy days and a traditional team of 3, but might work well for the droppers.
How much stretch, well I tried to do a simple test against Grand Max by marking off 20 cm of both with a drop of UV resin to gauge roughly what the 20cm length stretched to.
As the photos show Grand Max stretched about 10mm per 20 cm and Grand max FX about 20mm per 20 .
So with my basic test it looks like it stretches approximately twice as much, which very roughly translates to about 10 % . I will try and get official data on this.
What will this mean, well I suspect less ‘shock’ snapping off’s on those lighting quick takes.
This could be a great line for all the new fast taper rods like the amazing Sage R8 . Maybe a great antidote for too aggressive striking with these Rods ?
Anyway real life fishing update to come shortly.
Please get in touch if you are interested.
