Hard or soft fluorocarbon leaders - does it make any difference?

Yep, it’s January and things aren’t exactly easy on the bass lure fishing front! I had a go for bass on Wednesday afternoon but I could not believe how big the swell was down here on the south coast. I was on my own and I obviously had my lifejacket on, but the quoted swell period was 18 seconds+ and there wasn’t a rock I could stand on that allowed me to feel completely safe and keep a lure in the water. I tried for half an hour or so and I don’t think I got a lure back without weed on the hooks so I called it and headed home……….

But of course the time of year and some very up and down weather doesn’t stop my brain from churning around arguably even more about all things fishing. Somebody who I respect a huge amount in the world of fishing said something to me last year and it’s really stuck in my head - they prefer a softer type of fluorocarbon leader because they firmly believe it gives a better lure presentation, and to be perfectly honest I’m not sure I had really thought much about this when it comes to choosing my own leader material. For sure I know what I like, but I also do play around with a number of different fluoro leaders and from time to time I come across stuff that for whatever reason I don’t like that much. I don’t personally think that banging out heavier lures into more turbulent conditions - surf fishing for example - matters much at all when it comes to your choice of leader, indeed most of my own surf fishing last year revolved around the not very expensive and not very thin 30lb/0.56mm version of the Berkley Trilene Big Game Fluorocarbon. It works great and never for a single second did I have cause to think that bass might be shying away from my leader, indeed when the bass were coming thick and fast I really like the extra diameter of the line for putting a couple of turns around my hand and easily popping out the barbless single hook.

How about for your more subtle lure fishing though? It’s never scientific but I reckon most of us here try and get away with the lowest diameter leader we feel we can safely use for a given fishing situation, and please note that I am categorically not trying to say here that a softer or harder type of fluoro leader is making any difference at all - because I simply don’t know. I am merely putting some thoughts out because I would be daft to ignore the opinions of this particular person…………..

And last year I gave a lot of non-surf fishing time to two fluoro leaders in particular which do in fact feel somewhat different to each other - the “softer” feeling Savage Gear 100% Soft Fluorocarbon and the “harder” feeling Varivas Fluorocarbon Shock Leader. As an aside here - I know it’s more plastic and I wish it wasn’t the case, but ever since my falling in love with Sufix lines days I have thought that the way a line is “trapped” as per above is the simplest and most foolproof way for a spool of line to work. Who here gets annoyed when you go to grab a spool of leader from your bag and it’s all come off the spool and is in a right mess in your bag? More plastic use aside it’s full marks here to the way that Savage Gear have designed their leader spool, as per above. So simple, so perfect, except for the increased use of plastic.

Anyway, I can’t personally tell you whether a hard or a soft fluoro leader makes any difference at all to my catch rates, not yet anyway, and of course a lot of our bass fishing is hardly very subtle when compared to other forms of lure fishing. It makes sense to me that fishing something like a 6’’ DoLive Stick rigged weedless and weightless might benefit from a softer leader material and its increased flexibility, but I am not a fish and in reality I haven’t yet had anything noticeable happen to me which might cause me to think a certain way here. I do know that I seriously like both fluorocarbons and neither are exactly at the budget end of the scale, but there are of some cheaper and very good fluoros like the Berkley Trilene 100% Fluorocarbon, Varivas Hard Top fluorocarbon (I have used this a lot and it’s brilliant) and then the Sufix Super 21 FC fluorocarbon which is in fact a fluorocarbon mainline but it works great as a leader.

One thing that has stuck out to me over the course of fishing with these different fluoro leaders is how long-lasting the “harder” feeling Varivas Fluorocarbon Shock Leader is. It’s not cheap and a part of me can’t help but be drawn to the cheaper fluoros, but it has become very noticeable how infrequently I need to change my leader when I am using this Varivas Fluorocarbon Shock Leader - which in turn makes me feel better about the fact that it isn’t cheap. I do check my leaders a lot and I will always retie if I can see or feel any damage, but without doubt a harder type of fluoro leader takes more abuse than a softer one. I find less cuts and nicks and so on. What I can’t do is ignore the opinion though of that angler who talked me through his reasoning behind lure fishing with a soft leader material. This person is a far more experienced lure angler than me and regularly lure fishes for a far wider variety of fresh and saltwater species than I do, and his leader material of choice happens to be this “soft” feeling Savage Gear 100% Soft Fluorocarbon stuff. Food for thought or overcomplicating things?

Disclosure - if you buy anything using links found in this blog post or around my website, I may make a commission. It doesn’t cost you any more to buy via these affiliate links - and please feel entirely free not to do so of course - but it will help me to continue producing content. Thank you.