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A couple of years ago, I put up a post detailing my mistake experience with Tatsu. I won't get into the whole story, just say that the line frayed very very badly fished in rocks and brush, while the mono on two other rods showed no signs of similar wear fishing in the same places. I chalked it up to experience, and said to myself, self, don't buy any more of that stuff. I recently got a sample of this line to try again. Yesterday I decided to do some testing with a new BFS rod I built on an Immortal blank, an SS SV reel which I had just deep cleaned and polished, and a fresh spool of 10lb test Tatsu. Walked out on my dock and started casting. To my right is a large downed tree, and to my left is an even larger one. I spent about 90 minutes trying to screw up the line. I drug it over every piece of those trees I could cast into. Was throwing a fluke for a while, and then a jigworm. I even tossed the jigworm over a branch on purpose, then jigged it up and down a while trying to damage the line. It held up very well during all of this; showing no signs of the problems I had seen during my previous experience with this line. I use two knots to tie on baits; a SD jam knot for baits with treble hooks, and a palomar for everything else. I tried both, and both seem to hold well. I got the jigworm hung up good with both knots. The palomar broke when I tried to pull it loose. The SD knot held, and I broke off a decent sized piece of branch. This line is stronger than it's rated 10lb test. And, it holds a knot better than other fluoro lines I've tried. I put another reel in my vest pocket before going out. I wanted to try a slightly heavier reel, with a different profile, on this new rod, so I had an Alphas with 10lb mono. I decided I like the SS SV better for this rod. And I decided I like Tatsu better than mono for these contact baits. It has a little better feel for what's on the end of your line than mono. Not a night and day difference, but a real improvement. So, I have to eat my earlier words. I'm going to try this on more of my contact combos. I see no point in buying line this expensive for moving baits, but I can see myself using this line more for the feel techniques. Now is good time for me to try this. They are running a buy two, get one free promotion, which I will be taking advantage of. A spool each of 8, *** will let me rig up about half of my contact combos. I'm not going all in just yet, but i'm gonna give it a good long try this year.

Apologize in advance if this question has been asked before. How long can you use fluorocarbon line? Can you "flip" the line like you can braid and get more use out of it? Gene J., in one of his videos mentioned he got bout 2-1/2 years out of it by using KVD line and lure conditioner. Am pondering purchasing some Tatsu and want to see how long of use I can get out of it to help justify the cost.

I spooled up one reel with #12 Tatsu just before the Bass resource RoadTrip. Big-O can attest to the fact that I had to re-tie that setup more times than I counted. The line was frayed to the point I could easily break it by hand. I cut off and re-tied at least a dozen times in one day before I put that rod and reel away, in disgust. At the Soiree that evening I told Kent Tatsu was just about the worst line I had ever used. I had a few suggestions. One was a damaged rod guide. Not really possible because the fraying all occurred in the 24" or so of line tied to the bait; a t-rigged cuttail worm. I checked the guides with a q-tip anyway. No damage found. Then it was suggested that the weight was fraying the line. Sounded like a viable theory to me. To test that, I switched baits. Put the weight, bead and hook that were the suspected offenders on different rod, spooled with #12 XL, and put the bait from that rod, an Evo Shake2 jighead and space monkey, on the Tatsu loaded rod. Had the same results, Tatsu seriously frayed, and that useless, stretchy, non-abrasion resistant XL held up just fine, fishing the same cover and conditions. Thus my conclusion, and comment to Kent, that Tatsu produced a vacuum. Last weekend, I fished my first tournament in 20 years or so. decided to respool that reel, because I really like the combo. Stripped off the bad Tatsu, then discovered I didn't have enough #12 of any kind, except Tatsu to refill the reel. So I spooled up the Tatsu and went fishing. The results couldn't have been more different. Good casting, no handling problems, and very good slack line sensitivity, which was crucial on this day. And no fraying problems even fishing rocks, wood, concrete and weeds. So, I have to change my mind, somewhat. This is very good line. But, what happened on my first try? DId I get a bad spool? Happens occasionally. Did I get a spool with a bad bunch on line in the middle? I suppose that could happen. Here's my point. Should either thing even be a possibility in a spool of line that costs 50 bucks for 200 yards? For me, the jury is still out.