TackleTour's Fluorocarbon Showdown Sequel!! (continued)
 

Strain or Deformity: Some materials can be placed under a specific, constant load or stress and then, bounce back or recover from that stress once the pressure is relieved. Monofilament is a good example of this. While it might be stretchy if held between your fingers and pulled, once you stop and let go it returns to its original length. Fluorocarbon does not share this ability. We found, after subjecting our test lines to a constant load of 3 pounds over a length of time just long enough to measure each samples' change in length and write this value down, all but one fluorocarbon product failed to recover fully from the stress and had permanent strain or deformation. The lone exception? Sunline Shooter FC.
 

It gets worse. Seven of the lines countinued to deform after extended soaks, and to make it even more confusing, these strain results do not all correspond with the behavior we witnessed during the stretch tests. In other words, not all the lines that had extended strain results after lengthier soaks, were the same products that illustrated different stretch measurements after more time in the water.

Conclusions from our stretch and strain tests? Compared against our baseline product, Trilene XL, eight of our fourteen lines showed overall stretch results equal to or greater than this baseline when dry. Five of these eight were still worse than the Trilene XL even after we soaked the XL for 3 hours. That's a little over a third of the lines that fared worse than the our baseline mono. Even then, aside from a couple of products, the difference in stretch totals from this baseline was not very significant, and the surprise permanent deformation ( or strain ) results in the fluorocarbon is a bit disturbing. Certainly in this category, the overall performance of our FC lines was a disappointment.