Cranking It Up with Sunline's Crank FC (continued)

This line has good resistance to abrasion which makes it a good tool for fishing squarebills over rocks

Features: Sunline's Crank FC is available in spool sizes of 200 or 660 yards which is great because it's difficult to find fluorocarbon fishing lines in spools of more than 150 to 200 yards. It is only offered in one color. It's a kind of light amber which tells me the original resin is untreated for color. I like fluorocarbons like this because treating for clarity or color can only dilute the material and weaken the line. In this respect, Sunline's Crank FC has a very high end feel to it that I enjoy.

I also fished it with paddletail swimbaits with good success

Design & Ergonomics: Sunline's Crank FC is a different type of fluorocarbon line in that it is designed specifically to be fished with moving baits. When I'm considering a line, any line, for moving baits, I want something that handles well (check) but that also has a bit of stretch to help absorb the impact of those fierce strikes. Crank FC has an average stretch of about 10%. The average amount of stretch in the fluorocarbon lines used to derive our FPI was 11.6%, so Crank FC actually has less than average stretch characteristics.

Crank FC performed flawlessly on board my Lew's Custom Pro SLP

Where this line seems to perform better than other fluorocarbons is in recovery. When we conducted our original Fluorocarbon Shootout back in 2007, part of that mission was to prove or disprove the then mythical qualities of fluorocarbon line. One of those claims was the line did not stretch. Obviously it does - just not to the same degree as a wet nylon monofilament (fluorocarbon lines typically do not change behavior even when wet).

Crank FC is designed for moving baits, and that's all I fished with this bait, but there's no reason to think it can't handle vertical bait presentations as well

But what we discovered while stretching all those different fluorocarbons was most of them do not recover 100% from the initial stretch meaning they're a little longer than before the stretch. Crank FC has a better recovery rate than most and this is reflected in the line's FPI score.

While fluorocarbons aren't ideal for topwater baits, something like a wakebait fished in constant motion is just fine

Applications: Touted as a line for moving baits, I didn't really fish any vertical bait presentations with this line. However, I don't see why it wouldn't be perfectly fine in this application too. One thing I should note is the line's test results in resistance to abrasion came out below average. This result surprised me since the P-Ion process is supposed to help in this area. Of course, not knowing how the un-treated material behaves, it's tough to know how effective the treatment really is.

Ratings:

Pluses and Minuses: