America's Best Selling Fishing Line? Trilene XL

Total Score: 7.77 - GOOD

Introduction: If our previously reviewed Stren Original is the prototypical nylon monofilament, the subject of our next nylon monofilament line review is its twin. Berkley's Trilene XL, now under the same parent company umbrella as Stren (i.e. Pure Fishing) is just as popular if not more so than Stren. Touted by Berkley as America's best selling monofilament, it's only natural that we follow up the previous review with a look at Trilene XL.

Quality : Trilene XL was actually the baseline monofilament we used in our original Fluorocarbon Showdown article back in 2007, so we're fairly familiar with this line already. Yet after all that time, we've yet to publish a full blown review on that line alone. That ends today. Taking a length of this line right off the spool taken out of a brand new package, we feel the line is relatively consistent when pulled between the finger tips.

According to Berkley, Trilene XL is America's best selling fishing line.

Similar to all the nylon monofilaments we've reviewed recently, Trilene XL is not precision wound so it's good to see that oversight doesn't affect the line's consistency too badly. The surface of this line is smooth but once again, not too slick.

So we decided to take it into the lab to see what makes it so popular.

Trilene XL in 10lb test is published at 0.280 mm in diameter, but when checked in the lab, we noted an average over 5 spot measurements of 0.293 mm. This is a difference of roughly 0.29% - well below the average of a 0.70% discrepancy.

After our lab tests, it's time to take it out on the water.

Performance: I've fished this line many times before but not with the mindset of a review. To refresh my memory of this line's performance characteristic, I spooled up some 6lb, 10lb, and 20lb on a few different reels and fished them on and off over the course of our 2015 review season.