While visiting my good friend and graphics designer Nils Joergensen yesterday I had a short talk with salmon fisher, rod and line designer and casting wizard Henrik Mortensen.
The three of us talked about various subjects such as weight in grams/ounces vs. AFTM weights, shooting heads and other things related to rod classification and casting. Henrik currently works for Danish gear manufacturer Scierra (as does Nils, hence the gathering) and has done a lot of work on creating rods and lines that are easy to match and cast well - even in the hand of the unexperienced.
During the talk he mentioned a new shooting line that Scierra had developed, and he handed me a coiled up yellow line.
At first glance it looked like a thick monofilament line, but closer inspection revealed that the line wasn't quite round but more like a hexagon - having edges. Henrik explained to me that not only did the line have ridges, but it was actually flower- or star-shaped in cross-section.
The main purpose of this was to get less friction. But at the same time the line would pick up water, which would act as a lubricant. And as a further advantage any floatant applied to the line would get rubbed into the grooves and stay a lot longer than such things usually do on mono lines. Apart from that the line should actually float right out of the box, but that I have heard so many times about mono lines, which sink anyway.
The line felt good between the fingers, and I'm certainly going to give it a shot as soon as I can. My old favorite - the braided HT-line - has been discontinued a long time a go, and I only have one single spool left. So I have been on the lookout for a replacement for a long time.
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