I seriously like the 8-strand Sufix Performance Pro 8 braid, and I can still remember stumbling upon it in an online catalogue a few years ago, realising that that I had never seen or even heard of this braid before, then ordering a spool on Ebay from Poland I think it was to see what it might be like. Yes, I have a serious thing for Sufix lines, and it’s because try as I might I honestly can’t recall a single time when one of their monos, braids or fluorocarbons has ever given me cause for concern - and that is from many years of fishing with Sufix lines now.
But their Pro 8 is no more, or rather when current stocks run out that’s it ladies and gentlemen - say goodbye to one of the best braids I have fished with, regardless of price, indeed the fact that this outstanding 8-strand braid had always come in at under the £20 price point for a 150m spool is quite something if you ask me. Say hello instead to the replacement for this braid, the brand new Sufix X8. I have fished with this new 8-strand braid a lot now if that is any help, and like its predecessor I really, really, like it…………
Okay, so in truth I think that braids such as Sufix 832, Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8, Daiwa J-Braid (the one braid here I haven’t fished with now for a fair while) and the discontinued Sufix Pro 8 are that good they’d kinda do me for evermore, but fishing tackle companies are no different to other companies who make stuff and bring it to market - they need to reinvigorate their product lines to take advantage of new technologies and keep us the consumers buying their products. Product turnover, is that what it’s called in business terms? Whatever the case, Sufix X8 is their new “budget” 8-strand braid and with what seems to be an increasing number of UK anglers turning onto Sufix lines, some of you might end up buying and using this braid in due course - which I might add I would urge you to do.
I have been fishing mainly with the “Hot Yellow” 23lb/0.165mm/PE#1.0 Sufix X8, but I have also fished a fair bit with the 17lb/0.148mm/PE#0.8 - there is also a “Stealth Green” colour available. From the catalogue I can see that there are all the breaking strains or PE numbers we would expect to see (screenshot of the most applicable breaking strains for us above), and on 150m and 300m spools - the UK RRP of a 150m spool of Sufix X8 is £17.49 and for a 300m spool it’s £29.49. And oh how I would love it if one day a line company sold 300m spools with a little black mark on the braid at 150m.
What I deliberately did was to fish with this line for a while and see what I thought and what differences if any I could find to their Performance Pro 8 braid, and then I would go back to my Sufix contact to ask about the actual/technical differences between the two braids - would what I might find tie in with what was actually going on?
So many of these modern braids are so damn good these days and for the most part they refuse to let me down that it’s getting hard to find many meaningful differences. Sufix 832 for example is the “tough as hell but a little bit thicker and rougher feeling” 8-strand that I can tell is a different kind of braid to say the slightly thinner Daiwa J-Braid or the Sufix Pro 8, and this brand new Sufix X8 is very much in the “as smooth and thin as you like” family of 8-strands. We are only human beings and perhaps we tell ourselves things we almost want to hear, but from the off this new Sufix X8 feels a little bit smoother and rounder again than the brilliant Pro 8, and it’s a dream to cast and fish with - but then so are the other sub-£20 braids.
I have tried my best to be clinical, but at the end of the day I can only feel the braid in my fingers and then come to various conclusions when I am out fishing with it. This Sufix X8 behaves immaculately, it’s as strong as hell when I tie it to my fluoro leader via the FG knot, it seriously seems like it’s whispering through the guides when you blast lures out there, and even if I am only imagining this slight increase in performance, at the end of the day I am more than happy fishing with this new Sufix X8 over their Pro 8 which is of course discontinued. One thing I can’t help but notice is that this Sufix X8 is retaining its colour a bit better than the Pro 8 - all braids lose some of their colour over time, but this X8 is clinging on really well (will it hold its colour as well as that Spiderwire Smooth Stealth 8 does?).
So after fishing with this rather lovely X8 for a while now I went back to my Mr.Sufix contact in Italy to ask what the differences actually are between the two braids. Please bear in mind here that I can’t prove any of what he has told me but that I see no reason for him to feed me a pack of lies, not with how much information he has shared with me in the past. Mr.Sufix as such told me this, and it’s a direct quote from his email: “In brief, X8 is a substantial upgrading of the Pro8. We could do it because we have received from Toyobo Nippon Dyneema the availability of few new carrier thin sizes. This allowed us to make all X8 sizes with 8 carriers of the same size. This makes the line rounder but also smoother, without the small bumps you feel when you do a 4+4. The diameters are also more accurate than before. The strength is same, because dyneema quality is same. Line is softer because we have used a Japanese style coloring with a thinner layer. So the line is soft and silky smooth. Finally, yes, also the coloring should be more stable. We are making big progress there. And please consider that you can already say that ALL Sufix braided lines are colored with water-base pigments. We don’t use any longer any solvent that can pollute our environment!”
Now before I go giving myself a pat on the back for being a braided line guru which lets face it I obviously am not, I was rather pleased to get these details which kinda backed up my thoughts on this new Sufix X8 from getting out fishing with it. And yes, as I said earlier, I can’t ignore me almost wanting to find something a bit different with a brand new product - I have an older iPhone SE for example that works fine and you might have a much newer iPhone that Apple have obviously marketed as being a whole heap better, but is it really, and so on (let’s not go there with lure fishing rods though, because with my weaknesses any attempt at logic flies right out of the window!). All I know is that I am already liking this new Sufix X8 easily as much as their Pro 8 which in reality makes me breathe a sigh of relief that Sufix still have a truly outstanding, silky-smooth 8-strand braid that comes in at well under the £20 mark for a 150m spool (and I will report back in time). I am unashamedly a fan of Sufix fishing lines and in fishing terms this means a lot to me - another very, very good 8-strand braid that comes in at under the £20 mark for a 150m spool. Outstanding. Their UK catalogue is here if that is any help.
Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.