quality lines?????

[wabi]

Just returned a Rio Grand (WF3F) line to Rio because it had a very noticeable rough spot in the outer coating that felt like a rasp tooth going over my finger when I stripped the line in. It looked to me like a few fibers from the inner core were sticking up/out through the coating, or a piece of dirt had been in the coating when it was applied.
Wouldn't have been too upset, but this line was just sent to me directly from Rio's warranty department to replace a new Rio Grand WF3F that had so many memory coils (twisted core?) it looked like an old slinky toy floating on the water.

I also had problems with an Allen line I tried. I first tried a two color line and it had a very noticeable blemish (rough spot that I noticed when stripping line in) in the finish. Justin replaced it with a cheaper single color line (I ended up paying over $30 for a $10 dollar line ), but it had so soft a coating that the leader cut through the coating on the loop after only a couple fish landed.

So far the $10 lines I've bought on eBay have proven to be the best quality/bargain out there.
My limited experience with Cortland and SA lines have been good, but they are hard for me to find unless I buy online, and I think a lot of the eBay lines are very old stock that have been stored in an oven.

Not saying Rio and Allen lines are all junk, just saying I've had bad luck with them.

What lines do you find have consistent high quality?

 

[MoscaPescador]

I think that you had bad luck. Every Rio, Airflo, Scientific Angler, Cortland, and Wulff line that I have used had great quality control.

 

[silver creek]

I may be just bad luck, but are you sure it is not "operator error"?

Did you inspect the line as you wound it on the reel for the first time? If not, then it could be manufacturing or it could be that it occured during fishing or casting. You may have stepped on the line while fishing OR one of your rod guides may have a rough spot.

I've never found a bad spot on a line in 35 years of fly fishing.

 

[gt05254]

I use Sage (made by Rio) Performance Taper II's and love 'em. Switched every WF line from 2 to 9 to them.
Gary

 

[Ard]

Hi Mike,

If you are well aware of what weight & taper you need then buying any SA or Cortland line by mail should not be a gamble. I have owned quite a few Cortland lines but began using SA around 1992 when I discovered that they offered gray and olive drab as color choices. Right now every reel I have is spooled with SA lines and I use them frequently for long hours. I have no complaints whatever with any one of them.

The only thing that ever went wrong was when I broke a welded loop from a type 6 sink tip last June trying to pull my fly off a log in deep water. A rep from SA saw my post about the broken loop on the internet and contacted me. He took my mailing address and the company sent me 2 new tips to replace the broken one. I hope you can find fly line that will preform for you as well as mine have and if you decide to give SA a shot I can say that they are behind the product 100%.

Ard

 

[wabi]

I may be just bad luck, but are you sure it is not "operator error"?

Did you inspect the line as you wound it on the reel for the first time? If not, then it could be manufacturing or it could be that it occured during fishing or casting. You may have stepped on the line while fishing OR one of your rod guides may have a rough spot.

I've never found a bad spot on a line in 35 years of fly fishing.

To be fair the first Allen line could have been damaged by me and I informed Justin of it but he still replaced the line.

The first Rio line was spooled properly (I discussed the spooling method I used with the Rio employee I talked to) and he (Rio rep) thought it had a twisted core from my description of the problem.
Rio line #2 has some kind of foreign object (core fibers or dirt) protruding from the outer coating. It was firmly imbedded in the coating, would not wipe/wash off, and appeared to be coming from the inside (core) so I returned the line to Rio for them to examine. It was much more noticeable when the line was wet which suggests to me it may have been absorbing water and expanding.


I will try SA next Ard.

I have a Cortland on my 6wt FlyStik and it's been a great line so far.
Guess I need to find a fly shop that handles SA and will sell by mail order.

I've owned a few Rio lines in the past and never had a problem before, so I wonder if they might have just had a few bad ones slip through quality control.

 

[swampdonkey]

I picked up a Ross LT 2 off Ebay and the fly shop threw in a fly line with it. All I remember is it was a Cortland weight forward for a 5 wt. (Threw out the box) I have only had one chance to use it and when I did I noticed when the line got wet that the line got sticky and really hampered getting line out. I thought it might be one of the guides on my rod so I swapped to another reel/line and definitely noticed a huge difference so the problem was the line. Any thoughts on what this might be? I did clean the line before use with soap and water but after some researching didn't rinse it very well afterwards. Think this might be attributed or did I maybe just get an old line thrown on the reel that was sitting around the vendors store?

Either way I planned on swapping it out so this thread has been pretty helpful.

 

[jpbfly]

+1...for S A...been using them for long...never had a problem

 

[seajay]

The Allen line on my 8wt was a little to limp so I have some Airflo Ridge on the way. After some research those that fish alot here in the warm waters of Fla. seem to prefer the Airflo Ridge line over the Rio and Wulff line. That is why I chose it.As far as cold water I hear alot of positive about the S.A. and Rio line.