Sailing on the 8am lock the conditions were not looking good with a 13 Metre Tide ebbing with a North East wind blowing about 15mph and low pressure. With the wind in this direction and a big spring tide ebbing, the tide was probably running at a rate of about 8 knots. To give you an idea of how difficult the conditions were, it took us 2 and half hours to finally get the anchor to hold, at one time dragging a distance of almost 7 miles along a sandbank.

I have given you the above details to try creating a picture of the conditions on the day.

We decided to use the 14lb line and the 17lb line as a main line with the 12lb line as hook lengths. We used 7500 reels paired with Bristol Channel Specials.

Other lines used on the day were Berkley Trilene, Diawa Tournament and Berkley Fire line.
These are the lines we would normally use uptiding in the Bristol Channel so this would be a very good comparison. Normally we would use 25lb straight through with no leader but as we were using much lighter main line we used a leader of Triple-Fish Fluorocarbon 25lb to act as a rubbing line and to assist casting, although there is no need for power casting usually a smooth lob towards the anchor. Because of the very big tide plus all the other factors we were using 8oz fixed sputnik leads to hold in the sand.

We did not use the knot recommended in the packaging but used the knot we always use for braid and Berkley Vanish. This knot is quite simple and never fails; take the end of line, double it, thread it through the swivel, hook or other item of end rig, form a loop, hold this loop in your left finger and thumb and take 4 or five turns around the doubled main line passing through the loop. Slide the turns neatly into place, wet the line and pull firmly on the doubled main line. Trim off the tag ends and there you are. This knot has never failed yet and did not fail using Berkley Vanish Transition.

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 we were 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.

There were no breakages with the 17lb BVT but we lost 2 full sets of gear using the 14lb this was really an unfair test in these conditions and we could not say where the break occurred probably at the leader knot. Although we would not advise anyone to use 14lb line to uptide in the Bristol Channel, it just about coped (probably because it was new line) using a long leader and more care than usual and a couple of fish were boated on this rod.

We had two reasonable fish on the day, a 3lb Bass and a 3lb 8oz Codling both caught on the rod with the 17lb BVT. The day was a very hard day for everyone and over the radio we heard everyone was struggling having caught very little. We had caught around 15 fish with 4 different species between us Bass, Codling, Whiting and Eels so at the weigh in we new we were in with a chance. Most of the fish caught were under size for this competition and were returned alive. We weighed in 3 species and were equal 1st only to be beaten into second place on weight.

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. 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. If price is comparable to Trilene or Diawa Tournament then probably yes.

As this was a team competition we were all able to use the rods with BVT and the above is a compilation of all our views.

Tony, Jason and Phil
North South and Central Sea Angling Club