Fancy: Fishing Line Anyone?

Despite having read online about others' bad experience with fishing line, I was still eager to try it.

I consulted an old friend who has been an avid angler for more than two decades. For an hour, he meticulously explained the varieties of fishing rods, methods and different types of lines to me.

Thereafter, I asked him to cut me some fishing line that's between 1.10mm to 1.30mm thick to try stringing my racket with.

As usual, the first thing I did was to test the line's elastic properties. After comparing with tennis strings and making adjustments, I started work.

The fishing line was extremely smooth and slick. Like glass. Yet I could feel friction when pulling it through the grommets. It is so clear it's almost transparent.

To pull tension, I had to use my starting clamp to secure the string at the back of the gripper to prevent it from slipping.

When tension was applied, the line stretched slightly slower than syn gut (more like natural gut) before stabilizing. The stretch recovered quickly when tension was released.

I made the mistake of tugging at the knot with my bare hand to tighten it and got a small cut. I can immediately visualize the line cutting through the ball fur. If this is playable, spin levels should be very exciting!

The synthetic gut crosses was extremely easy to weave as the fishing line was softer than and much more slick than poly.

When bouncing a ball, the stringbed feel reminded me of natural gut. It provided a very soft and deep pocketing and yet had a very fast and powerful rebound. Clearly, the string had a lot of give and was able to recover powerfully.

Playtest:
- The fishing line / syn gut hybrid is totally playable!
- From the first hit, it was very soft and comfortable. It does not seem to require any breaking-in at all. Even after 30 minutes, the feel remained constant.
- Control was very good. There was no hint at all that it was fishing line. Ball contacts felt exactly like it was strung with tennis strings. Soft, controllable and comfortable!
- Topspin was only slightly above average but slices were very good, making the ball skid after the bounce.
- Volleys were on par with full syn gut. No problem with accuracy nor depth control.
- My partner today "D" has a long history of wrist injury. I got him to test out this stringbed, telling him it's fishing line before handing him the racket. Within just a few hits, "D" liked it so much he asked if I could string this exact setup for him!
- Even from my side of the court, I could see him shaking his head in astonishment after every shot on how good the stringbed felt and how good it played! His comments echoed mine, that it felt comfortable and controlled.
- I would say that this fishing line behaved a little between a poly and natural gut. It has the crispness and slickness of poly but the pocketing, comfort and powerful resilience of natural gut.

24Aug2013 update:
- Took this out for another spin today.
- The stringbed still feels similar to the previous session. Tension holding seems good and performance seems consistent.
- I swapped between a few rackets today so when I was playing with this, it felt the most comfortable and powerful. While pocketing is deep, rebound is also fast and consistent.
- Between this fishing line and the grass trimmer line (link), I like this a little more as the thin gauge provides much better feel.

- A quick check on the weight of a half-set of fishing line (about 19ft).

26Aug2013 update:
- This is the fourth session of use. The stringbed still feels crisp and fresh, yet have very nice and deep pocketing with strong rebound. I am happy with the tension holding and durability so far.
- Against my old friend "M", I did not hold back and let it all out. Both of us stood about 2 metres (6 ft) behind the baseline and bashed the ball with full strokes. The fishing line held up very well and delivered very good power and spin with heaps of comfort. My shots landed very deep, just about a metre (3 ft) inside the baseline and kicked up. Some shots that looked like moonballs curved down hard just when I thought it was going out. So this line works better when hit hard.
- Both flat serves and spin serves worked well too! This is very likely to become one of my main setups.
- Lots of ball fur were ripped off today and still zero notching on the mains!!! See pic below.

28Aug2013 update:
- Tension, spin, control and comfort are all still holding up well for this session.
- During gameplay, I felt there was a very slight loss of elasticity. It seems the stringbed is starting to show some fatigue.
- I checked for notching in the mains and found some very very slight notches. Not sure if you can see it in the picture.
- I seriously doubt if I can snap the mains even after a few more hours of play. Whatever it is, I'll use this till it either snaps or goes "dead".

04Sep2013 update:
- There was a heavy downpour that ended just an hour before my game. So here's my chance to test how this fishing line would perform with soaking wet heavy balls.
- I have been severely bashed hit with nationally ranked players before. Other than their consistency and repertoire of tricks, the other thing that stands out was how "heavy" their shots were. Since I don't get to play with these folks often, hitting with wet balls became my substitute. 
- This fishing line scored very high marks indeed! Many aspects like pocketing, comfort, control, fast powerful rebound is very close to natural gut.
- Only feel is slightly lacking.
- I tried a variety of serves - flat, side spin, topspin - and all performed very well. Since it was not matchplay, I ratcheted up the power to 100% just to see if control could still hold up. And it did! Even swinging at maximum strength, out of about 20, I aced 3, faulted 5 and of the rest, only 4 were returned! And my partner today is an agile and fit rock climber cum regular tri-athlete competitor!
- There is still almost no notching on the fishing line but I can feel the elasticity is declining.
- I enjoy this line very much. This will be another combo that will be part of my regular setup!

07Sep2013 update:
- Two friends tried this today. One of which is a tennis coach and he liked it from the first hit. We played two-to-one against him to let him test some shots under pressure to see if the stringbed's control would perform under duress. 
- Whether is it volleys, swinging volleys, lobs, drops, flat or topspin groundstrokes on the run, he was extremely impressed despite heavy initial skepticism. He even repeatedly asked about the fishing line specs and setup after the test!
- In another previous session, another 4.5-5.0 player also expressed a strong liking for the power, comfort and control after hitting.
- The end of today's session would mark about 7 hours of use.