Initial impressions - Gosen Answer Casting PE X16 braid (pretty sure this is the most expensive braid I have tried)

There is no getting away from the fact that £54.99 for a 150m spool of braid is a hell of a lot of money, and I would suggest that most anglers will not entertain the thought of spending this much dosh to fill a spinning reel up for their lure fishing. I quite understand this, and especially when you can get a bloody good mainline for under £20 per spool these days, but the fact is that this new Gosen Answer Casting PE X16 braid exists, it’s in the UK, and some anglers will choose to spend this much money on a mainline. I didn’t I might add, so it’s a big thanks to Ben at the Art of Fishing for kindly giving me a spool of the 33lb/PE#1.5 to try out…………….

Which I loaded on to a Penn Slammer IV 2500 spinning reel. You might suggest that I should be putting such an expensive mainline onto a silky-smooth Shimano or a Daiwa, but I know the Slammer IV 2500 inside out and I love the reels. I know what level to load a braid up to so I don’t get any line management issues, and I like how the bit of extra weight to the reel makes some of the lure rods I might fish with feel better in my hands. Basically I really like the Penn Slammer IV 2500 and I do happen to think that many of these Penn reels work better with a slightly thicker braid.

Not that this Gosen Answer Casting PE X16 braid in the 33lb/PE#1.5 rating feels remotely thick I might add. I know that braid ratings are all over the place all around the world, but wow this feels like a thin mainline for the strength, and I feel very comfortable with how strong it actually is because I have lost two or three lures to snags while I have been fishing it - and it’s gone exactly where I would expect it to. Using a 20lb Sufix Advance fluoro leader - loving this leader material - attached via the FG knot to this Gosen braid, when a lure has been properly snagged the break has occurred at the knot in the fluoro to my lure clip. Exactly as it should be with a mainline this strong to a 20lb leader, but it doesn’t always work like that. Nice one Gosen!

I have fished with a hell of a lot of different braids over the years, but unless I am mistaken there have been only two or maybe three of those braids which have felt like a complete mainline as such. You know when you feel a braid between your fingers and you can feel that it is (obviously, this is what braid is!) made up of a specific number of strands woven together? What I think is the best braid there is - Sufix 131 - doesn’t feel like this though. It feels like one complete line if that makes sense, and into that rarefied category I am now putting this 16-strand Gosen Answer Casting PE X16 braid. I see that Ben says “It’s a bit like mono really” on the Art of Fishing website, and in most respects I get where he is coming from. These expensive mainlines don’t remotely fish like a mono I might add, and with how good so many other braids are these days I can’t sit here and tell you that just because a braid mainline feels like a complete line it’s now a much better line - but I also can’t get away from Sufix 131 being my out and out favourite braid and it continues to last and last and last without any signs I have come across that it’s degrading over time. Sure there’s a good bit of colour loss, and I’d expect to see that with this Gosen stuff over time as well, but I have a reel here which has had a spool of 20lb Sufix 131 on it for four years now and I trust that specific mainline as much as I did on day one. If this Gosen braid was to last four years+ then the price of it starts to make a good bit more sense.

I do like to think that I know when a mainline is coming off the reel particularly well, and I get that feeling big time with this Gosen Answer Casting PE X16 braid. I can’t prove it with any distance measurements, but I know my lures are getting out there really well. It takes the FG knot really well but don’t ask me about other leader knots because I don’t waste my time using them. I like the colour of this Gosen braid and I am interested to see how it keeps performing. I feel very confident in saying that this is a very serious braid, but then it should be at the price. I know how much Ben at the Art of Fishing has loved the various Gosen braids and fluoros for years now, and I completely trust his knowledge and experience. Initial impressions of this Gosen Answer Casting PE X16 braid are very good, so I will keep fishing with it and report back at some point in the future. Any mainline needs a good bit of time to show what it can and maybe can’t do for your fishing, and especially a mainline this expensive. I have a feeling that this stuff might be one of the really good ones………..

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