Fluorocarbon leaders, anyone use them?

"rw" wrote


I have the strong suspicion that people who swear by FC have fallen for a
seductive fallacy: Cum Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc, or "With this, therefore
because of this."

Maybe the fishing was slow, so they tried changing tactics, changing
flies, and finally changing to FC. Suddenly, the fishing got hot, but it
wasn't due to the FC. Sometimes the fishing just gets hot. But it's fixed
in their minds that the FC was the cause, and the selling point about the
index of refraction is at least plausible.

It would be possible to test the effectiveness of FC objectively, with
blind tests in actual fishing conditions. It would be time consuming
because you'd need lots of trials to make a confident conclusion. AFAIK,
it's never been done.



I did test it, semi-scientifically .... at Davis Lake, Ca.

I changed at regular intervals, 1/2 hour as I remember, maybe an hour, over
several days ( nearly a week ) of fishing. This was all sub-surface work
where FC should have it's biggest advantage. This was damsel time and I
have a pattern of my own that I have great confidence in, so I fished the
same pattern constantly, just the tippet was changed.

At the end of the time, there was NO significant difference in catch rate
between FC and mono. I DID catch one or two fish more with FC ( over
several day period ), BUT, that was clearly because FC happened ( pure
luck ) to be on the time a big, hungry, school of fish worked near me and
you couldn't keep em off the hook for a few minutes. I've had the exact
same experience with mono, on other trips, and I'm certain the mono would
have ended up with the 'one or two' edge if it had happened to be on at that
special period.

My buddy, that runs a fly shop, says he believes that fly fishers are
'looking for a magic bullet" and long for their fishing ability to be in
proportion to their buying power, or, at least, long to be able to buy
fishing ability. I think he is right, if FC was cheaper I bet it would
have LESS "true believers" running around. If I ran a shop, I'd be sorely
tempted to greatly raise the prices on a variety of 'secret products,
available only here' to increase my ability to "separate gullible, desperate
flyfishermen from the contents of their wallets." .... hell they seem to
actually enjoy the separation



That said, I don't nymph enough to comment, but I CAN see an advantage to
abrasion resistence, in that use.