Preferred leader material for heavy popping

[FishStyx]

G'day folk of UA.


What is your preferred leader material (type and brand) for heavy popping and what would be your ideal ratio in main line to leader strength? (ie 100lb mainline to ???lb leader). Target species would be the usual suspects on reefs.

[REEFMAN]

I enjoy using Berkley Big Game, Shogun and Sufix Zippy. All beautiful supple soft lines, easy to work with and trouble free knots. It's so long since I went popping that ratios and stuff is outside my knowledge base...
For fluorocarbon leaders, Double X was tops for me. Varivas and Japanese makes too expensive!

[Cam Mundy]

Light Tackle 150lb
Heavy duty 240lb

For me personally Mono works better than Fluoro once you pass 120lb it knots up better has more stretch and is a lot more supple.
I use Fisherman and occasionally Varivas But using the the big loops of Sunline or moi moi that you use for rigging marlin lures works perfectly fine and is far cheaper its just a PITA unrolling it and re rolling it onto smaller spools for transport. 

[FishStyx]

Thanks guys... Been using those huge coils of Shogun and, as you say Cam, taking off some for each trip and making smaller travel friendly coils out of it.


The 150lb DoubleX flouro that I have seems very soft. I was tying a leader on earlier and I suddenly felt that it was not going to be up to the job. I think I'll go back to my 200lb Shogun on my heavy rig and use the flouro with my light one.


I have a few pieces of hard flouro... when is hard flouro used as opposed to soft flouro?

[REEFMAN]

The harder the Fluoro. the higher the % of true FluoroCarbon.

For example, Double X make a Fluorocarbon that is soft and supple, just beautiful to work with, one of my favourite leader lines. Problem is it's not true FluoroCarbon, just coated FluoroCarbon.



Then they make a "Superior Fluorocarbon", which is stiff and quite difficult to work with, especially in larger diameters. This is 100% pure Fluoro - invisible under water, because it refracts light. It also has a brilliant Abrasion Resistance, hence it's use in a lot of Big Game fisherman's arsenal.

None of the Fluorocarbons have the same tensile breaking strain as Mono, but true Fluoro has very good abrasion charateristics.



Is Fluoro necessary? I doubt it.
But we get to fish so seldom that we must take advantage of every possible edge. Some guys think Fluoro makes a difference in the Strike rate, so therefore if I have it, I'll use it... 


 

[FishStyx]

Quality info there... thanks bud

[Gerhard]

Fisherman 150-220lbs shock leader depending on tackle and where I fish.

[Lenny]

I know yo guys don't use wind Ons .


But for what it's worth , I have made a bunch meaning over a 100 FC leaders with the second pic xx reefmans posted , most of them was 150 lbs and100 lbs , I know one member keeps on ordering them , he uses them for trolling he told me , lebaka/ Gary .


About  a year ago I phoned tuckers , to ask prices for FC , I nearly fell out of my chair , it was for a big spool of ande think  100 m .
I opted for the xx , and there's still a demand for it and nobody has complained on the forum or that I know of .


I do want to ask , you you guys use FC leaders for jigging ?

[Tommo]

I usually use 150lb or 200lb Sufix Zippy for popping. It is soft enough to knot well and tough enough to handle the fish and most abrasion.
I do sometimes use XX fluoro for jigging, especially when targeting amberjack in structure. Not for the visibility so much, but because it is super tough.

[FishStyx]

Thanks Boet. I came across one of your posts a few years ago that said pretty much the same thing... noted. I have zippy in the lower dimensions and have always found it more than satisfactory.


A bit of further reading last evening turned up quite a bit of consensus that FC doesn't have as much knot strength as nylon... not by a huge amount though.

[REEFMAN]

Styx... you should be PR - ing the Fluoro for Heavy Popping anyway. 
Fluoro won't be affected with a PR Knot.

[FishStyx]

Can't PR your terminal bud 


But point taken... I think I'll stick to my 220lb Sunline tho. It's always worked well for me.


And btw Reefs, I've gone over to an FG knot... prefer fishing to tying knots 

[REEFMAN]

Can't PR your terminal bud 

  Silly me... 

[Cam Mundy]

Hard Fluero can be problematic if not tied properly with the PR knot as its hard and slick which can cause the knot to slip.

[FishStyx]

Hard Fluero can be problematic if not tied properly with the PR knot as its hard and slick which can cause the knot to slip.

Cool... it seems difficult to work with all round... maybe good for a few specialist applications that I will avoid

[HV]

Suffix zippy 90% of the time.

Have fished all the brandnames before and zippy has proven itself time and time again!!!
I do concede that in very shallow waters fluoro do have its merets.....

H

[Nepptune]

Agreed I use a mix of Zippy and Varivas.... never really had any problems with any of them...


I do love the knotting properties of the Zippy...

[FishStyx]

Thanks boys, your feedback is much appreciated. UA is such an amazing source of quality info