Sufix 131 braid (2nd) review after 3.5 years of fishing with it - not remotely cheap, but my first ever spool of it is still going strong

I would guess that most of us here are feeling the current cost of living crisis in various different ways, so why on earth am I doing a second review of a fishing mainline which costs north of £40 for a 150m spool of it? (the first review is here, all the technical details of this braid are there). If you go lure fishing for bass with a spinning reel or reels that you trust implicitly on the line management/wind knot front then my argument for spending a lot of money on a spool of Sufix 131 is that after 3.5 years of fishing with it I firmly believe that you are actually going to end up saving money - if you can look at this on a longer-term basis…………

I have gone back through my email correspondence with Sufix, and I reckon I first started fishing with their Sufix 131 in November 2018 which was a few months before it came to market. I would hazard a guess that I have probably fished with a wider variety of braids than many other anglers, and I knew from the off that the new at the time Sufix 131 might be something a bit special. Three and a half years down the line with it and I have absolutely no hesitation in calling it THE best braid I have ever lure fished with. I have various spinning reels here which I am either trying or which I own and fish with on a regular basis, and I still have that original spool of Sufix 131 sitting on a reel and still performing flawlessly. Apart from getting greedy with my line level on one of the Penn spinning reels and suffering a bunch of wind knots, I haven’t yet removed any other Sufix 131 braid from any of the spinning reels I regularly fish with. From time to time I reverse it on one of my reels and of course there is a bit of colour loss after so much use, but any of the Sufix 131 I have here sitting on various reels still feels as good as new.

FISHING TACKLE - BRAID AND LEADERS

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FISHING TACKLE - BRAID AND LEADERS //

If Sufix 131 braid didn’t exist then my go-to braid would be the much cheaper and bloody good Sufix X8, followed by either Sufix 832 or the Savage Gear HD8 Silencer 8-strand which is really good and dirt cheap, but I wish they did it in a bright colour to go with the dark green colour version. Whatever braid you are currently fishing with is probably bloody good as well, indeed I can’t recall coming across a bad braid as such for years now. For sure there are braids which I like more than others though, and often for reasons which might only make sense to me and what I like and “feel” when I am fishing. The simple fact for me as an angler is that I really, really like every single thing about how this Sufix 131 braid works for me - casting, very smooth-feeling, cutting through the wind, limp, strong, knots well - and even though it’s seriously expensive I am still going to argue that in the long-run it’s good value for money because I haven’t had to change any of it yet. If you fish with one spinning reel and you were to get at least 2+ years out of a spool of braid and you know that even after two years it’s still just as good as new then in my book it’s money well spent. Line companies like Sufix probably want us to change our braid more often than I currently am - trying and testing different braids aside - but I can’t see the point when Sufix 131 goes on and on and on.

And we’re talking about fishing with it this end over everything from very rough ground through estuaries and on into hectic surf conditions etc. I have played around with a few different diameters of Sufix 131 but I have settled on the 20lb/0.165mm/PE#1 size as being the most useful for me. In the 3.5 years I have been fishing with Sufix 131 I haven’t had a single failure which I couldn’t explain away by tight braid getting dragged over sharp rocks. I only ever use the FG knot to tie my braid to my leader so I can’t comment on how Sufix 131 might perform with lesser leader knots, but with the FG knot it’s incredibly strong and I have dragged numerous lures out of snags when I fully expected to lose them. I don’t know if Sufix 131 in the 20lb/0.165mm/PE#1 size does actually break at 20lbs (what does 20lbs mean though? Straight pull on a line machine, dry knot strength, wet knot strength etc?), nor if the diameter is really 0.165mm, but I do know that it feels very thin between my fingers and it’s more than strong enough for the fish I catch in the UK and Ireland.

And of course the whole confidence in your gear thing plays a big part in my loving Sufix 131 braid so much. My two biggest bass which I have been lucky enough to connect with and land from the shore have both come on Sufix 131 in the 20lb/0.165mm/PE#1 size. Damn right a 20lb braid should not be breaking when hooked up to fish which are way less than 20lbs, but you and I both know that it doesn’t quite work like this (previous/unnoticed line damage, poor knots, terrain etc.). With the way I see most anglers “fighting” bass I reckon they could use a 5lb braid because they ARE putting so little pressure on the fish, but on the flipside my not giving either of those two bass any line doesn’t mean I was putting anywhere near 20lbs of pressure on them. Tight braid never touched any rocks that I was aware of during the brief scraps either. In the heat of the moment my gear didn’t let me down and I will naturally gravitate towards Sufix 131 as my mainline because I have so much confidence in it.

I have fished a fair bit with the dark green Sufix 131 but I far prefer the “neon chartreuse” colour. I love winding my friend Marc Cowling up about his entirely logical arguments against using coloured braids, but we are all different and I have never personally had a single lure fishing situation where I remotely felt that the use of a bright coloured mainline with a clear leader was adversely affecting my catch rate. If it has and I don’t know about it then so be it, but I prefer the neon chartreuse colour Sufix 131 and I’m sticking with it! As I said I am often playing around with different reels, but as of May 2022 I’d take the awesome Penn Slammer IV 2500 with a 150m spool of Sufix 131 on it in that 20lb/0.165mm/PE#1 size as my perfect spinning reel and braid setup for as good as all the bass lure fishing I might do (you will need a bit of backing on the reel but make sure not to get greedy, any Penn reels in the 2500 sizes especially do not like being filled right up).

Please don’t shoot the messenger here and tell me that I shouldn’t be talking about such an expensive mainline during these increasingly expensive times. I know that Sufix is not remotely cheap and you can get some fantastic braids for far, far less money these days, but I can’t ignore how long this (expensive) Sufix 131 is lasting me and I hope that I have provided at least a reasonable argument here for taking the short-term hit for the longer-term good. You all have a good weekend……………

FISHING TACKLE - PENN REELS

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FISHING TACKLE - PENN REELS //

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