“Scientific Anglers’ new Sharkskin fly line just hit the shops at $99.95. What justifies this cost and will anglers pay up?”
Pat Ehlers Dec 2007 “Midwest Flyfishing”
Rick
Absolutely nothing. SI has a wonderful line priced at $35 that works just fine for my angling. I believe it’s called the Headstart. Forward weighted. You can buy a lot of tying materials for the extra $60. JGW
Yep! Some people just gotta have the latest and the best and will pay almost anything for it.
You probably won’t see me running out to buy one real soon, but I will say that they are very nice to cast, although I’d bet one would be smart to wear a stripping glove with this line.
Personally, I can’t pony up 100 bucks for a line & hard to imagine it being worth 50% more than the SA, RIO, & Wulff lines I now use. I’ll still bet it will build a loyal following.
Mike
Sharkskin will increase your casting distance and that is its target market. The trade off is the line does throw a little water on pickup and it does get dirty more quickly than smooth lines.
Welcome gzacckey!
The sharkskin sounds nice, but I like the Mastery series quite a bit and would just buy more of the mastery series before I would pay 1.5x the amount for a sharskin line.
From what I’ve read there supposed to stay cleaner beacuse of the scale pattern. Maybe I read wrong.
Kevin
I have floating lines in sizes 3-12 in weight forward and another 4 in DT
That’s 14…at $100 a pop…=…$1400 to replace them with the “latest thing”
Do they come in sinking lines too?
…I just wanted to go fishin’… I didn’t want to buy the company!
Since long distance casting “usually” (not always) is not a factor for me in most warmwater situations (add the tight confined spaces, heavy brush, high banks, etc. and you can see my point), also when most fish seem to bite within about 30 or so feet of me, I can’t justify it for myself. It would probably be great for open water situations and spooky fish where longer distance is a major factor. I will most likely stick with the SA Ultra, Concept, and Wet Cel lines that I really like a lot. Now all they need to do is come out with smaller weight sinking lines in the more affordable Wet Cel series of lines. Like a four weight, say a WF-4-S slow sink full sinking. Hint, hint, hint.