Sufix Advance fluorocarbon leader review, plus some general stuff about fluoro
I always use a fluoro leader, and for all that I sometimes fish with some very good anglers who choose to fish without a fluoro leader - braid direct to lure - I am not about to do so myself. Because of the FG knot and the various advantages that I believe a leader gives me, I simply do not see that there is a single weakness to using a fluorocarbon leader - I see only advantages and strengths. Like many of you I am sure, I have used any number of different fluoros over the years. I really like some of them, I don’t like some of them so much, and a few really stand out, but for all this fishing I still can’t really tell you exactly why I prefer a certain fluoro over another one. Some just feel a bit better, or because of a specific fish or something which happens when I am using it, I end up trusting one leader more than another I guess……………
I have loved Sufix fishing lines ever since I first went to Namibia to fish for sharks from the beach. I quickly became aware that the local anglers were mainly using a maninline called Sufix Synergy, and when you see fish of that size coming in all over the place you can’t help but notice! When I went back to Namibia a year later I took a load of that strong as hell Ultima Red Ice which worked well, but there was no doubt how much better the Sufix Synergy and Tritanium was at cutting through the waves and “dragging” far less. A while later I came across the brilliant Sufix Zippy leader out in the Seychelles where it was being used in about the 140lb strain for GT leaders on the fly fishing gear. Sufix lines have done it for me for many, many years now, and of course THE braid which I love above all others is the (not cheap) Sufix 131.
So I was having a conversation with somebody in the trade I really like and respect earlier in the year, and he was telling me about this very advanced Sufix Advance fluorocarbon. He reckoned it should be good for our sort of lure fishing leaders, so I duly got hold of a couple of spools to give it a go. There are actually various spool sizes available because this a version of this Sufix Advance fluorocarbon is also used as a mainline in some fishing circles, but I really like the tiny little 50m spools you can see in the photo above. I like to carry at least a couple of different diameters or breaking strains of leader when I am out fishing, and what I really want is very small spools which take up virtually no room in my rucksack. I don’t see the point of biggish plastic spools which might hold only 50m or so of line.
As I said at the top, I can’t give you many deep and meaningful reasons as to why I prefer one fluorocarbon line over another, but straight away I really liked the feel of Sufix Advance. You know when you run your fingers down the line and how it then “sits”? Nothing scientific here, but this stuff feels so good and has just the right level of “stiffness vs softness” which I like. It knots well, and what really helped was not long after I started to fish with this Sufix Advance I went and landed the 76cms bass above back in March. The actual fish and where I landed it wasn’t a serious test for any of my gear I might add, but when you go to grab the leader and pull the fish up over some rough rocks, of course it’s going to instill a good dose of confidence in you - and I have been loving this Sufix Advance ever since. I mainly use the 0.405/20lb and 0.330mm/17lb versions and there hasn’t been a single occasion when this leader material has given me any cause to doubt how good it is. It just works for me. I also like the price of £8.49 for one of the little 50m spools.
For scale, that’s the Savage Gear Savage Minnow Weedless 10cm lure
This is from the Sufix website: “Our award-winning* Advance® Fluorocarbon promises the ultimate in handling, performance and clarity that you can expect from a modern castable fluoro fishing line. At Sufix®, our engineers have developed a new technology that allows us to bind the extruded materials together better than ever before, in a process that we call GPT™, or Gel Phase Technology™. The process itself is as sacred as Willy Wonka’s own recipe, but what it will bring to anglers such as yourself is improved transparency, unrivaled strength and abrasion resistance, increased sensitivity, and supreme handling on the reel and through guides”.
100% fluorocarbon line
15X Super Tough
Virtually invisible in water
Exclusive G2 Precision Winding™ decreases line memory
Fast sinking. Sinks 4 times faster than traditional nylon lines
Low stretch and easy to handle
Virtually memory-free
If you don’t have a serious thing for Sufix lines like I do, there are any number of different options when it comes to fluorocarbon leaders. Top of the tree for me and many other lure anglers I know is the Seaguar Ace Hard. It’s not particularly cheap but it’s SO good, and I know some anglers who will use nothing else. If you made me use one leader material only for evermore, Seaguar Ace Hard would be the one for me. I also really like the little spools of Savage Gear Semi-Soft fluorocarbon leader, and I wish more line companies would adopt the spool design which so easily and logically traps the line and stops it falling off the spool if some crappy bit of tape or a badly designed spool clip doesn’t quite work properly. The various Varivas fluorocarbon leaders are also very, very good, with a good selection of leaders at different prices. I could go on and on here because as I said I have used a lot of different leaders over the years, but let’s leave it at that for now and come back to it at some point in the future. I like trying different stuff out as you know.
The lure and leader on which I caught the 76cms bass in the video further up the page - 20lb Sufix Advance fluoro leader
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