Kryston Super Mantis
What is It?
Super Mantis is a new hooklength material from Kryston. For those of you already familiar with Snake Skin and Snake Bite the format for Super Mantis is similar - a braided inner core surrounded by an anti-tangle plastic coating. The outer core can be strategically stripped off to make both simple and sophisticated rigs.
Using Super Mantis
The outer coating is relatively easy to strip but this is best done with something fairly blunt - such as the edge of a coin , finger nails or dare I say teeth - not a sharp knife - otherwise you'll cut through the inner core. When stripped the inner braided material is relatively limp but stiffer than some braids. You can tie knots with the coating intact or stripped back . It's best to lubricate, tighten and test your knots before trimming any excess material as you are more likely to get a bit of slippage with knots - especially when the plastic coating is intact.
Knot Strength
This is always the deciding factor of whether I'll use a line or consign it to the bin. As I believe in 'real' testing I tied a number of rigs and tested them by loading them up with weights in 4 ounce steps. The Super Mantis tested had a stated breaking strain was 15lb and both colours, gold and green, were tested
First, a size 9 ESP swivel tied with a twice through the eye and 5 turn Grinner with the coating intact and a size 6 T6 Raptor with the same knot but with the coating stripped. No real worries here, the Super Mantis snapping at between 15.08 and 16.00. Good.
Secondly, the same set up but with a knotless knot at the hook end. Results were similar to the previous tests. Even better!
I was initially concerned about the darker strands parting near to the knots - in some cases at between the 13 and 14 pound loads - leaving the lighter portion of the braid material without the camouflage fleck. However, the Super Mantis still performed well and still snapped at over it's stated breaking strain - so no real worries here.
In Action
Using my usual tackle - a 1.75 Harrison Interceptor and 14lb Fireline I embarked on an actual fishing session.
I won't labour on here, only to say that the Super Mantis performed excellently.
One of the results, taken from quite a restricted and shallow swim is shown below.
Verdict
Excellent product - buy some. Could be very useful for feeder fishing to avoid tangles - although I didn't test the product for this particular style of fishing.
Price
Around £12.45 for 20 metre spool.
BFW Score
Got to be a 9 out of 10. If it was cheaper and not suffered the problem with the darker fleck material it would have got 10.
Bob Gill (bgit) 25th August 2001