When I was talking about fluorocarbon leaders last week, I forgot to say that I don’t really subscribe to them being more “invisible” than mono

Somebody kindly left a comment (thank you Albertus) on my fluorocarbon blog post last week which made me realise I had sort of forgotten to talk about the fact that I don’t personally buy these claims that a true fluorocarbon is significantly more “invisible” than its equivalent diameter clear monofilament line. Nope, my using a leader in the first place is for a number of reasons, with increased “invisibility” not being one of them, and yes, I understand that some lure anglers don’t fish with a leader and they do just fine. My reason for fluorocarbon over mono is that I just like the way the fluoros I use for my leaders work as regards knotting and less stretch and how well some of them last and so on…………..

So there’s nothing remotely scientific in my choices here but that particular comment did get me thinking, and especially when the last two days have been absolutely raging and the Tamar is about as brown and uninviting as I can ever remember seeing it via many, many winter cod fishing sessions. I did try a bit of lure fishing without a leader last year and I just don’t like it. I am way past worrying about my leader being a potential weak point in my setup - thanks to the awesome FG knot here of course - so for me the “hassle” of tying on a fluoro leader simply isn’t a hassle when I am so used to doing it as and when required.

But if you go looking around then some of the claims made by the fluoro companies would have us believe that the moment it sinks below the surface it is essentially invisible to fish - and I’m not sure how much I buy this at all, at least not with how so many of us go about our fishing. I have spent a lot of time around fresh and saltwater fly fishing all around the world and you get to see a lot of often very expensive fluorocarbon leaders being used, but I tended to get the feeling that much of this is a mix of fly presentation and behaviour in and on the water - with less “visibility” potentially being part of that behaviour.

And however subtle we might be getting with some of our bass lure fishing here, we aren’t in the realms of much of the fly fishing world. I have many amazing memories of my first photography trip to the remote atolls of the Seychelles back in 2006, and it’s when I first came across the guides using a clear mono leader called Sufix Zippy specifically for the GT leaders (giant trevally, and their bonefish etc. leaders were always fluoro). I had had loads of bait fishing experience with various Sufix monos back then, but I had never come across Sufix Zippy back in Blighty. When I got back home from that trip I rang up Gardner Tackle I think it was who used to import Sufix into the UK and asked them to please get some in for a bit of a try out - and they kindly did. I ended up using the cheap as chips and very, very good Sufix Zippy leader a lot for the bait fishing I was doing.

I noticed how the outstanding South African guides were carrying their leader materials like this on their waterproof rucksacks, with a spool of 100lb+ Sufix Zippy always there as GT fly leader - which are bloody hard fish to grab hold of as per above!

So why don’t I use such a good and cheap (mono) leader like Sufix Zippy for my bass lure fishing? Good question when I stop and think about it, and another comment from last week made a lot of sense and got me thinking as well: “I have given up on fluorocarbon leaders and went back to a quality nylon line . It's thinner and cheaper to replace, less visible due to smaller diameter. I also like to use a long leader and thinner nylon travels a lot better through the guides. When I fish a big shingle bank it's easier to land fish with when you grab the leader. Fluorocarbon has little stretch and a long nylon leader has a little give in it helping to prevent hook pulls” - thank you Graham, great food for thought.

Sorry for banging on about Sufix Zippy here, but it’s only going to help if I talk about a mono leader material that I have actually used a lot. If you go by the figures above it isn’t actually the thinnest mono leader going, but forget the breaking strains here because Zippy is an incredibly strong line and I have always thought that on a straight pull it’s one of those “stronger than the figures suggest” lines. Go on the diameter (from 0.35mm upwards with Zippy, 100m spools, cheap as chips) and I can assure you that this Sufix Zippy is some of the most reliable clear mono leader material going. I don’t personally subscribe to these worries about hooks potentially pulling via less stretch in a fluoro leader, not with the rods and hooks we use, but I do very much like a lot of Graham’s thinking in his comment above.

Another Sufix leader which is even cheaper again than Sufix Zippy is their Sufix Memory Free, and again this starts at 0.35mm, comes on 100m spools again, and I fished with this stuff a bit a few years ago for my bait fishing and I remember it working really well as hooklength material. You also have the very well known Amnesia mono leader material which is also dirt cheap and over the last few years I have heard from a number of lure anglers who swear by it for their bass fishing. There are no quoted diameters to go on and if you go on the breaking strains alone then Amnesia has always felt like a fairly thick hooklength to me - but I am pretty sure it’s a lot stronger than it says on the tin.

Are we creatures of habit so much of the time though? I have had a fair amount of experience fishing with mono leaders for my bass lure stuff but for over time I have for whatever reasons ended up back with fluorocarbon. As I talked about last week there are various fluoro leaders I trust implicitly but then I stop and think about the whys and wherefores and I can’t help but wonder. Okay, so it’s not as if we are forever changing leaders and incurring massive costs, but if there is one thing I like doing is playing around with stuff and trying different things……………..

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