Thread: Ultralight Line Review and Rankings

I have several spools of the Unitika Hybrid line supposed to be delivered today, probably won’t get to fish it today, our mail usually comes about dark this time of year, but I will spool it up and play with it best I can from my kitchen.

I’m excited to try this, if it lives up to the manufacturers claims, this could become my main line moving forward. Hopefully it’s not garbage or a bunch of hype.

Looking forward to the review. I'm a huge fan of Ester line but reading up on this sounds like this hybrid line solves the manageability issues with Ester.


Regards

Got the line in finally this evening.

Ordered a spool of 2.5, 3,4,5,and 6.

Got the new Vanquish spare spools spooled up with 3 on the 2000 and 6 on the 3000.

Can tell right off the bat this is going to be much friendlier than the Varivas Ester I’ve used in the past. Now, I have no history with the newer ES2 Ester so my comparisons may be dated.

Bear in mind, this is not an on the water review, that will take me a while to gather a true opinion, but just an initial impression from spooling, yanking it, stretching it, abrading it etc at my house.

This line feels like premium nylon mono in the hand, yet it has very little perceived stretch to my ham hands at least, considerably than the 3lb twitch master I compared it with just now. My test was super duper scientific pulled off a 3 foot or so piece of each, wrapped a few inches around fingers on each hand and pulled. That being said, the Unitika stretched less over a 3 foot length than the Twitch Master, take that for what it is.

I overfilled the 3000 spool, partly on purpose for this test and partly because I thought I could get that last little bit on the spool, I couldn’t. BUT! Even being overfilled, probably by 10-15 yards, with the bail open and the line free to do what it wanted I didn’t have the million coils jump off in a possessed fashion like the old ester used to do to me.

The line sinks. Slowly, but it does not float. Depending on your use case and feelings on the matter this is either good or bad. Schrödinger’s line if you will…

My other spool for the 2000 has Varivas PE on it currently, so I strung it up and attached a 1/4oz tungsten drop shot weight to it and twitched it in the air with about 6 feet of line out to get an idea of shock vibration transmission through the line as well as drug it across my carpet and tile floor. I repeated this test with the 3lb twitch master and 3 lb Unitika. I think to no one’s surprise the PE was the clear winner, especially with no shock leader tied on, but the Unitika hybrid was very close, a noticeable step up from the twitch master in feel.

The big downside to this line is it is only very slightly fluorescent blue clear line, it may glow in the sunlight,I don’t know, but in my kitchen with led lights overhead it’s clear line and i feel the smaller diameters could be hard to see. Time will tell, as sensitive as I think it will end up it might not matter.

I ran the stretch test pieces across my concrete porch edges and tugged on them again, surprisingly to me the Unitika looked and felt horribly abraded but when it broke as I was pulling it, it broke at my fingers not at the abraded section, the PE didn’t do that, it frayed and gave way right where it had rubbed on the concrete. The twitch master didn’t care a bit about a little concrete, it never did break as I ran out of wingspan to pull it.

Probably won’t be able to get to the pond or river to actually use it until the weekend, but I’ll be looking for opportunities to test it out.

I’m excited so far for the potential this line could have and what it means for my fishing, if it lives up to its promises it will quickly take over as my #1 line.

Time will tell.

Cheers Y’all.

Got to fish with the 3 and 6lb today.

So far my initial impressions holding up, with a couple additions from actually getting use on the water.

1. Cast distance is excellent, with the Graphiteleader Finezza Prototype 610 UL, the 3 lb Unitika, and a 1/15 oz zman micro finesse jig head and zman Larvaz plastics, I was casting every bit of 100’ if not more.

2. This line makes a “noise” when reeling it in, not quite like braid does, but there’s something. I can’t figure out what it is.

3. Sensitivity is right where I thought it would be. Quite a bit more than mono and fluoro, but not at pure ester/braid levels.

4. It is a bit knot sensitive, my normal not I toes is a Berkeley knot, but it kept popping when I’d cinch it too tight. Switched to Palomar knot and no issues.

5. It’s not as hard to see as I thought it’d be, it was not sunny though, that may change that.

I like it, a lot.

If it holds up over time I’ll be moving a lot of my fishing over to this.

This is a great middle option for guys that don’t like the super stretch of mono/fluoro, but dislike leaders and leader knots with this small diameter stuff.

I’ve fished and handled it enough to be able to recap,end you might try it if any of the features here interest you. Not ready to recommend it or rate it for my chart, probably be summer time before I got enough time with it for that. But I can at least say it doesn’t suck and some if not all the promises from the manuf. are accurate thus far.

Good report and review. Thanks for sharing

Thanks for the review, think I'll go ahead and order a few spools of the 2.5, 3 and 4.

Gonna have to try some.


Regards


Sent from my iPhone using Crappie.com

Originally Posted by Yodie

Some may remember my spreadsheet of all the UL rated lines I tested a few years ago, I have it update with a a few new lines since I posted it last.

I am currently working through testing of the Varivas Infinity PE braided line and will add this to my list.

I thought I’d re post it to let anyone new see it, as well as take requests for any line someone might want an opinion on before purchasing? I enjoy testing lines and trying new things so I’d be happy to pickup a spool of line someone would like an opinion on.


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Have you ever tried the Varivas Area Super Trout Infinity PE X8? I just bought the suffix nanobraid 2lb but i feel like the diameter of 0.04mm is not accurate. It seems to be way thicker then any JDM line i purchased. To me it seems like a 0.10mm diameter of a JDM line. Not sure if you noticed this as well? Was quite disappointed. As theoretically, this nanobraid by suffix should be half the diameter of the Infinity Varivas trout braid line but it seems thicker