Reviewing the new Berkley Vanish Transition Fluorocarbon Line

The purpose of this new style Vanish from Berkley is to give the line better usability for the fisherman. Above the water it should be highly visible but below the surface it should still have the same vanishing qualities we have come to expect from this well loved line. When we tried it out for ourselves, we were very impressed and found that it certainly did what it said it did! However, at the same time, we wanted to hear an independent opinion and so we asked Tony Irwin, Jason Brennan and Phil Allan from the North South and Central Sea Angling Club near Bristol to give us their view of the Berkley Vanish Transition line (BVT). Here's what they had to say : The visibility of the line was good. As we were using 2 green lines, a yellow line plus a blue line on this day, it was easy to pick out. I am sure it would be just as easy to pick out among any other line as it picked up the light very easily and reflected a golden colour very useful in a tangle. Casting was no different than any other line we were using once the line had been cast once or twice to bed it down on the reel. We never had any problem with memory as there seemed to be very little compared to Berkley Trilene or Diawa Tournament which we were also using at the time. Memory is a major headache if you are using a fixed spool; we were testing this on 7500 multipliers but it performed so well I would use it on a fixed spool. The only problem we found was the elasticity. Although soft to the touch and nice to feel, it was very difficult to break out the lead if you wanted to change bait. We were not sure if this was good or bad as at least we found that our bait stayed anchored to the bottom. Proved by the fact we caught several fish on the two rods used in the competition with BVT. We did not get any rod thumping bites but bites were easy to detect using both fixed and running end rigs. Although the stretch level was a bit of a pain when trying to break out the lead it was a safety factor when a nice fish was close to the boat. The 12lb line we only used as hook lengths but compared to Berkley Vanish it was much nicer to use as it felt much softer and easier to untangle and less prone to twist and kink. We also used 17lb as hook lengths as well and this was again better than normal Vanish as it was more user friendly, using our version of knot we had no problems. We did not take any more particular care with the 17lb BVT than the other lines used on the day and gave the line a good test probably more abuse than normal due to the terrible conditions we fished in. The view was that we would definitely use BVT in place of BV as hook trace but the price would be a major factor in using BVT as a main line.