The Perfect Popper Leader

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The biggest difference in performance was without a doubt the diameter of our leaders. Creating a butt section out of 60lb mono means you have to taper pretty quickly to keep from having a 12’ leader, or a very short tippet section. When testing materials I found that unless you wanted to use super hard tippet (and greatly limiting your tippet options) the Hard Alloys made the fly turn under or to the side on casts because it created a hinge point when the materials changed.

The 60lb butt section cut through the wind on different rods, and fly lines, carrying the fly to its target time and again. I then wanted to know what the “big bug" leaders butt sections diameter were compared to our .3". The largest one that we tested that was close to our tippet size (under 16lbs) came in around 40lbs and .245” which is significantly smaller. Therefore we will be tying our own from now on which you can get down below.