Line Diameter--vs-Breaking Strain

I'm a relative new "returner" to the noble art, and in the intervening period, the term breaking strain seems to have been overtaken by line diameter.
I don't have any problem with breaking strain, but I cannot understand how to relate a line's diameter to the type of fishing I want to do.
With so many new types of line and even choices of colours, it just gets more & more confusing. I have always liked Maxima Chameleon but I am prepared to try new stuff especially if it does the job better.
Can anyone please give me a bit of a teach in.

Ron,

First of all I think we need to know what sort of fishing you are doing; floatfishing for roach? feeder for chub, carp fishing, piking etc.

As you say it has got confusing. The line strengths and diameters may or may not be accurate at all, and errors up to 50% are not unknown. The recent announcement that line manufacturers may sign up to a EFTX (?) test so that both breaking strain and diameter are certified as being within 10% may help but far from all will sign up.

This week I did some tests of my own on the line I use for floatfishing for roach and chub. In essense what you will find is that the majority of experienced anglers use the tough regular lines for reel line and the special lines for hook links. Maxima would be a regular line, and I still use it and Daiwa Harrier and Sensor lines as reel lines. Carp and pike anglers have generally moved on from Maxima. I have found the co-polymer lines to last only a short time on the reel. It is often the case that the regular lines are underarted on breaking strain wheras the special lines are accurate or overstated, so Daiwa Sensor 4lb 0.20mm is actually 6lbs line! Maxima 2lbs 0.12 is 2 3/4 lb line and so on.

Once I have had time to do some more tests I will be doing an article on tieing hooks and line strengths.

I hope this helps
Mark

I was searching the forum to see if there existed a scale of line diameters and equivalent breaking strains, although it seems unlikely what with there being innaccuracies.



With regard to the EFTX? comment by Mark (OK it's an old thread, but that's what happens when you use the search function!) other users might find this site of some interest.



http://www.tica-rollen.de/main/index.php?id=637,812,0,0,1,0

Try this

http://www.tacklebox.co.uk/line_tests.htm

Its quite comprehensive

Cheers Andy, that was certainly informative, is there a similar resource for smaller diameters? They were all pretty hefty lines. /forum/smilies/smile_smiley.gif