Quality : Soft Steel's Instinct FC comes in a typical four inch diameter filler spool of 200 yards. Despite not being precision wound onto the spool, the line itself feels very smooth and consistent when running a five to six foot length off the spool between my fingers. I acquired four weights to check out, 4, 6, 10, and 12 taking the time to measure the diameter of each at five different points along that first five or six feet off the spool. I then took the average of those measurements for each weight to determine a real world diameter and laid that information out in the table below. Soft Steel's Instinct FC measures out relatively close to the specified diameters for the four weights I sampled.

Soft Steel's trio of freshwater fishing line product

Lab Tests: Next up for the line was our series of standard tests for tensile, knot, resistance to abrasion, etc.. For these tests, we choose the strength that measures closest in diameter to 0.300mm so we can compare the results against our historical average plus a few select, popular brands. With Instinct FC, that meant the twelve pound (12lb) test which is specified at 0.280mm but for us measured 0.305mm.