I had seen some posts on Facebook about this new Fluorocarbon line from K-9 Fishing Products and decided to check into it some. I've really been searching for a Fluorocarbon I liked but had not yet found one that measured up to all my expectations. Most of the ones I've tried are too stiff or brittle for my liking or they just had too much memory to make them fishable more than a couple of trips. Plus they all cost an arm and a leg at 20 to 30 dollars for 300 yards or less. I found that K-9 Fluoro was 20 dollars for 550 yards and decided it was worth testing to see if it was at least as good as the other Fluoro lines I have tried. If it wasn't any better than the other Fluoro lines at least I could save some money. I order a spool each of 17 and 10 pound test to try out. I planned to spool my Worm Rod and my Football/Swim Jig rod with the 17lb and spool my Crankbait Rod and my Spinnerbait Rod with the 10lb.
The line arrived on just a couple of days after I ordered. The fast shipping is a bonus when you have to order a product that isn't in any stores locally. That evening I got busy spooling all 4 rods to fish the next morning. The first thing I noticed about this line is how soft or pliable it felt, far softer and less brittle feeling than any other Fluoro that I'd ever tried before. It really felt a whole lot more like a good monofilament line than it did a fluorocarbon. That was impressive to say the least but also worrisome as well. There are 2 reasons I fish fluorocarbon line on worm and jig rods; first I want a line the fish can't see well and second I want a line that has low stretch so you can set the hook even on long casts. Because K-9 Fluoro felt so soft to my hands I was concerned that it might not hold up in the hook setting department on my worm and jig rods. There was only one way to find out for sure and that was to take it fishing. If nothing else I figured I found a great new line for my crankbait and spinnerbait rods. As I was spooling the line on my rods I also noticed that it didn't have a lot of memory like most fluorocarbon lines. It wasn't all kinked and curly coming off the spool and that too impressed me very much. As I tied on my lures I also noticed how easy it was to tie good knots with this line. Now the real test of a knot is under fishing conditions to see if they hold when setting the hook. I finished getting my rods setup and ready for fishing the next morning and was excited to give this line a try.
I got a late start but was on Dickinson Bayou by 9:30 that morning. There were two goals for the day and that was to see if I could locate more bass for the tournament the following weekend and test out this new line. A small front had pushed through Saturday evening and I hoped it would not affect the fishing too much. It was windy as I started fishing and this gave a good test to the castability of this new line. The K-9 Fluoro pasted the castability test with flying colors. It did take a while to locate a few bass willing to bite but I was finally able to locate some that were hungry. Now these bass didn't have a lot of size to them which in this cases was a good thing for testing hook setting ability of the K-9 Fluoro. It is much harder to set the hook when worm fishing on a smaller bass than it is on a bigger bass. The reason for thais is when you set the hook on a small bass you actually move the bass and you might not be able to move the bass and get your hook embedded in their mouth good if your line stretches. This was not the case with K-9 Fluoro as I was able to get good hook sets even on long casts fishing a worm on these small bass. As you can see from the picture these bass were nothing to wright home about, but they did dismiss my concern that this line might have too much of stretch for worm and jig fishing. One other thing I found out while worm fishing that day was K-9 Fluoro is also very tough. The fish were in a lot of debris around the pylons of a train trestle and the K-9 handled very well. In fact twice I got snagged and when I pulled to try and break off the hook actually bent and came free before the line would break. This also proved what I stated earlier about the knots I tied. The knot held and didn't fail when I was actually trying to break my line. Needless to say the 17lb I was using worm fishing more than held up to my expectations.
I left the bass I found at the train trestle alone after catching a couple. I did not want too many of them to have sore mouths for the tournament the following weekend. I also switched from fishing a worm and picked up my crankbait rod. Again even though it was windy I didn't have any problems casting with the K-9 Fluoro. It came off the reel smoothly and I was able to make good long casts even with the smaller crankbait I was throwing. As I stated above I loaded my crankbait rod with the 10lb K-9 and it would get tested good. One of the things about fishing brackish water bayous is you never know what will hit your bait. What happened on this day was I found a group of good sized Red Drum, also known as Redfish or just Reds. If you have never caught a Redfish let me tell you they are one of the hardest pulling fish that swims and pound for pound may be the hardest. They put tackle to the test and in this case they put the K-9 Fluoro to the test. A redfish the size of the one in the picture can really strip off some line, specially when it is 10lb test. They also look for places to cut you off if they can like going around dock pylons. The ones I found were around some docks and bulkheads and yes they tried their best to cut me off. Well I'm pleased to say that I caught 8 or 9 of these line strippers on the day and didn't lose a single one and never retied my crankbait. This really attests to the K-9 toughness as well as knot holding ability. In fact I was so impressed on how well the 10lb K-9 performed I decided to load up my spinning setup with it when I got home. I don't fish a lot with spinning tackle, but I wanted to have one ready in case I needed it for the tournament the next weekend.
Speaking of that tournament; my teammate and I went on the win the tournament. We had a great day on the water overall, but it did start off very slow. In fact it was so slow starting I did break out my spinning rod. Once again the K-9 Fluoro performed better than my expectations. In fact my spinning setup accounted for my best bass of the day which was the 2nd biggest bass of the tournament. Only my teammate's beauty was bigger. Another testament to K-9 line was the fact that we caught most of our fish on crankbaits. This wouldn't be much of a big deal except I used the same crankbait I did the previous weekend and I never retied. I checked the line and the knot and saw no reason to retie. That same knot held all day during the tournament through 9-10 bass and another 10 plus redfish. By the way we do try to catch redfish during these Bayou tournaments because there is always a side pot for the biggest. My teammate and I were so confident in our bag of bass we focused on the redfish for the last 2 hours of the tournament. We caught a lot of them but our biggest fell 2 tenths of an ounces short of winning the pot. One more note to attest to just how tough this Fluoro is and how well the knots hold I fished the Bayou again yesterday. I took out a friend that wanted to catch some redfish and they were still there and still hammering crankbaits. I know it was foolish, but I still had not retied my crankbait yet and really wanted to find out just how long the line and knot would hold up. I ended up catching additional 5 reds on that same knot before running into a real brute. Luckily we saw the fish before he broke me off and it was in the 35-40 inch class. It was really my fault he broke me off. To tell the truth this brute had completely wore me out, and I just wanted to end it as quickly as possible so I tightened my drag to try and get him to the net. Guess he had another idea on how to end it and now he is swimming around with my crankbait as a trophy. From the look of my line it appeared that the knot held and the line broke, like at a weak spot from all the previous fish running me around pylons and such.
In closing let me just say that I've found the Fluorocarbon line I will be using from now on. This new Fluoro from K-9 Fishing Products met or surpassed all my expectation. It is tough as nails, with great knot tying properties, has very low memory and it casts really well even on windy days. To say the least I couldn't ask for anything else from a Fluorocarbon line. Then there is the price that is really unbelievable. Where else can you get 550 yards of Fluorocarbon for just 20 dollars? Heck even if you don't believe me the price alone makes it worth doing your own testing of this new line!
Until next time, Tight Lines and Take a Kid Fishing.
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