Sufix 91 braid review - around £27 for a 150m spool or £50 for a 300m spool

What’s not to like? My favourite line company already makes what I think is the best braid you can get - Sufix 131 - and then they choose to release a cheaper 9-strand version which is made in the same way and with a super-slick coating and they call it Sufix 91. Any angler would be somewhat daft to not take the mainlines they fish with very seriously, but of course these days we can get our hands on really good braids for less than we used to - Berkley Sick X8, Sufix 832 etc. From extensive use I know that a much cheaper mainline like the Sick X8 does a really good job for me, but money no object and there is still something about fishing with Sufix 131……………..

Money does come into it though. I love that a braid like Berkley Sick X8 is really good for not too much money, but give me the choice where cost doesn’t matter and I am going to fish with Sufix 131 because it lasts and lasts and lasts and I trust it 100% for any kind of lure fishing I have done with it. The feel of Sufix 131 in my fingers is unlike any other braid I have fished with, and when I fish with it I love every single thing about how it casts and feels and fishes. Not very descriptive I know, but I do know when a truly special braid is on one of my spinning reels.

And then along comes this cheaper but obviously not exactly budget priced Sufix 91 braid. We are around £27 for a 150m spool or £50 for a 300m spool of this stuff, and as ever I can’t sit here and tell you that going over the £20 mark is going to do a whole lot more for you. I do know what I think when I fish with the very expensive Sufix 131, but it’s not as if my lure fishing suffers when I “drop down” to something like the much cheaper Berkley Sick X8. We are able to choose though, and if money were no object I’d wrap myself in Sufix 131 and panic-buy the world stocks in case Sufix ever stopped making it!

I haven’t fished with this new Sufix 91 braid nearly as long as I have the Sufix 131, but with how much I trust Sufix lines and how perfectly this newer mainline has behaved from day one, I feel very confident that we have a very serious braid here. I put a 300m spool of the 25lb Sufix 91 on this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel I have been fishing with (review to come, love it) and it only required a tiny bit of mono backing to bring it up to the line-level you can see here. Why 25lb you might ask? Because that is what was available at the time. As much as I like the Berkley Sick X8 braid, in real world terms I would ignore the diameter claims and just go with breaking strain. But then you almost need to go the other way with this Sufix 91, because if this 25lbs version is as “thick” as 0.205mm then I’m a Taylor Swift fan. Between my fingers this Sufix 91 in 25lbs is a seriously thin braid.

Everything about it feels premium. It hasn’t quite got that ever so slightly wiry feel of the Sufix 131 which I think makes it fly through the guides so well, but this Sufix 91 does feel incredibly smooth and round and lovely. I am never going to hook a 25lb bass, but when I fish with a 25lb mainline and my leader secured via the FG knot, you are going to bend a number of hooks before losing a lot of lures. I like that bit of security. I know when a really good braid is flying through my rod guides behind whatever lure I am whacking out, and this newer Sufix 91 braid is just that.

When I first heard about it I mistakenly thought that this Sufix 91 braid might be an upgraded version of their ridiculously strong Sufix 832 braid. I reached out to some contacts and found out that I was miles off! Nope, this Sufix 91 uses the same process as the 131 braid, where the strand of gore fibre forms the central core, but with fewer strands woven around it compared to Sufix 131. This is reflected in the cheaper price. The use of the central gore core makes for a super round, solid construction that won't go flat or take on water, which often happens with braids with this number of strands. Sufix 832 is still the stand alone braid because it has the gore interwoven with the other fibres, which focuses on the abrasion resistant qualities of the gore fibre, where even just fraying of the material through repeated casting is reduced up to four times that of any standard (no gore) braid.

So there you go. In many respects this review is easier to write by referring once again to the more expensive Sufix 131. Take the best braid I know of, make a cheaper version in the same way but with a few less strands and we are left with Sufix 91. As I said at the top, what’s not to like? If you want to fish with a braid which to me feels very, very close to the best braid I know of but is a good bit cheaper then this new Sufix 91 is a complete no-brainer to me. I am scratching around to try and find something wrong with this new braid, but I trust Sufix fishing lines above all others and I can’t. Hell, my only complaint as such is that I do wish that Sufix might introduce a few different mainline colour options than dark green, bright green and bright yellow. How about getting back to the Performance Pro 8 days of pink and orange braids?

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