Berkley Forward Braid Review | GearJunkie Tested

I am unashamedly nonchalant when it comes to selecting braided fishing lines. Every time I respool a reel with a braid, I switch up the brand, mostly out of curiosity. Each company claims to have the best casting, most sensitive, and best strength-to-diameter braided line.

Having tried a bunch of different options, I can honestly say that while there are some differences between braids, I haven’t once been on the water and thought, “Man, this line is really keeping me from catching fish.”

That’s why, when I found myself in the new showroom of Berkely’s parent company, Pure Fishing, I was pretty disinterested in the chatter about the new Berkley Forward braid. There were other things in the room that had my attention, like the new Maxscent baits. But then a spool of it was put into my hands, and I was told to feel the braid.

Running the line through my fingers, my immediate thought was, “Woah, this is weird. Now I get why everyone keeps bringing this up.” All of a sudden, I had a lot of questions. Lucky for me, Berkley decided to answer those questions by giving me a few spools to try.

In short: After putting the new Berkley Forward braid through my own “scientific” tests, I can state that it does indeed cast further than the competition. Berkley markets it to forward-facing sonar users, but really, anyone looking for a further-casting braid will love this line. The super-shooting line is sensitive like other braids and is great for finesse fishing applications. It’s available in three colors but only goes up to 17-pound test, so it’s limited to spinning rod applications.

What Berkley Claims

Berkley markets this as a braid that will excel in forward-facing sonar fishing. If you’re like me, you may be wondering, “What does that mean? Is this some sort of fancy fishing line with a magical wavelength that draws forward-facing sonar transducers to it? If I don’t use forward-facing sonar, does this line have a place in my fishing lineup?”

It turns out that it doesn’t have some crazy way to tie-in with forward-facing sonar. It does mean they designed the line with forward-facing, finesse applications in mind. That means casting at long distances to targets that you find with your FFS unit and getting finesse baits down to them quickly. The box it comes in highlights the following features: casting distance, sensitivity, and sink rate.

My First Impressions

When I first held the line, I was immediately drawn to its slick feel. It felt like a fluoro/braid hybrid rather than a straight braid. In fact, when I learned more about its construction, I learned that it’s technically not a braid. Braided lines have multiple filaments literally braided together.

Berkley doesn’t do that with this line; it has a proprietary process to bind the filaments together, so it made sense that it felt different than other braids I’ve handled.

However, in my past life, I worked for a manufacturer of fly fishing leaders and tippet and learned some of the nuances of fishing line manufacturing. Usually, gaining performance in one area means losing performance in another. I needed to figure out if this line met its claims and if it lost performance in other areas.

My Tests

I do not have a fancy lab with instruments to test lines, as Berkley does. However, I figured I could create some tests to see if I could identify true differences between this braided line and others. You can find those tests and results below.

Casting Distance

This test was pretty obvious. I strung up a spool of 10-pound Berkley Forward braid and put it on a Shimano Zodias 7′ Medium Light spinning rod with a small Ned rig jighead. I then took the rod to a park, bombed out some casts, and measured how far it went. I made 10 casts and took the average distance.

I then removed the reel with the Berkley forward braid, put a reel with 10-pound Seaguar Smackdown on the same rod with the same jig, and repeated the same process.

The Forward braid averaged 103 feet, and the Smackdown averaged 80 feet on the nose. While it’s impossible to remove human error or the effects of wind on casting with this test, it’s pretty clear that I was able to increase my casting distance on average.

Sink Rate

A big factor affecting the sink rate of a braided line is its diameter. Thinner diameter lines have less surface area and thus have less resistance in the water. Everything else being equal, a thinner line will sink faster than a thicker line when attached to the same lure.

I poked around some manufacturers’ websites to see how the diameter of the 10-pound Berkley Forward braid stacked up to the competition. Here’s what I found:

It’s clearly not the thinnest braid. Is it thinner than some? Yes, but not the thinnest. To fit the claim that it’s faster sinking, it would have to be more dense than other braided lines, which it may be. I could have broken out a grain scale to measure its density, but remember the part where I said I’m nonchalant about braid? Too much effort.

Furthermore, the super-slick coating could also affect how it sinks with less friction with the water. I don’t really have a way to test that without a giant water tank and timers. I landed on an inconclusive result in the improved sink rate test.

Sensitivity and Stretch

One of the main reasons anglers fish braid is for sensitivity. Braided lines give you the best connection to your lure, allowing you to pick up bites better than you can with fluorocarbon or nylon monofilament. But how do you quantitatively test that?

You test stretch. Braid is more sensitive because it has zero stretch when put under pressure. With this new braid feeling so similar to fluorocarbon, I was curious if it would stretch like monofilament lines. I cut a big piece of the line and placed two marks with a Sharpie on it, 6 inches apart. I then wrapped it around my hands and pulled as hard as I could.

Like most braids, it started cutting into my hands before it would break, but I pulled as hard as I could. After a few minutes of pulling and torquing on each side of the marks, I set it down and remeasured it. There was no stretch between the marks. Berkley didn’t give up sensitivity to gain the extra casting distance.

Abrasion Resistance

Another benefit of braid is its superior abrasion resistance to other types of lines. That’s why anglers use it to fish in thick cover. With a 50-pound braid, you can saw through logs.

As I said earlier, often, when you improve a line in one way, you give something up. Thus far in the Forward braid test, I found increased casting distances with no loss in sensitivity. That left abrasion resistance to test.

Enter another one of my redneck, literal backyard tests. I took my 10-pound Seaguar Smackdown and 10-pound Berkley Forward to the backyard woodpile. I marked a small section on each line and ran it over a log 100 times. The following are macro images of each one of the lines after the test:

Both showed signs of fray, but it was much more obvious with the Berkley Forward braid. However, there are a few things to point out.

First, the “fray” you can see on the Forward braid may just be the slick exterior coating and not the fibers of the line itself. Second, it’s still more abrasion-resistant than fluorocarbon, which snapped under the same test.

Finally, Berkley never claimed the Forward braid has superior abrasion resistance. They say it’s great for finesse fishing tactics, which you often won’t be doing in heavy cover where abrasion resistance is paramount.

The Final Test: Fishing

My favorite of the tests was when my wife and I took the dogs on a walk to a nearby river filled with smallmouth and panfish. I brought some rods along with different braids.

Like most braids, the new Berkley Forward braid allowed me to detect subtle bites and my finesse lures ticking along rocks on the bottom. I could differentiate between bottom contact and contact with a fish’s face.

The biggest benefit of the Berkley Forward braid is that it actually resulted in me catching more fish. How, you may ask? There was a section of the river that widened out and was very deep. Within 3 feet of the bank I was standing on, the river reached depths over my head. But there was a really good-looking eddy on the far side.

At that point, I had a rod spooled with Seaguar Smackdown in my hand. As hard as I tried, my little lure kept landing short of the juicy spot.

I busted out the rod with the Berkley forward braid, and proceeded to land the same bait right in the juice and came tight. To my dismay, it wasn’t a big smallmouth but the ever-annoying rock bass. Still, it was a fish I wouldn’t have caught without Berkley Forward braid.

Final Thoughts

Outside of testing, I noticed the line does have more memory than other braids and seems stiffer, but those negatives can be mitigated with a fluorocarbon leader. I fish a leader with braid 100% of the time anyway. I noticed no difference in knot strength.

The Berkley Forward braid is a unique braided fishing line. Its slick feel allows for longer casts, which has real-world benefits, specifically being able to reach more fish. I tested it in both 4-pound, which was great for light crappie jigs, and 10-pound test on my bass rods. Outside of situations where I need the most abrasion resistance, it’ll be spooled on my reels.