Leader or Spooled

[MuskieFever]

How do you decide if you're gonna spool up with fluoro or just use a fluoro leader? I have little to no experience with fluoro, just an occasional leader. I'm finally making to switch to using fluoro after getting out fished badly last year with a buddy. My question is what are the pros and cons of a full spool of fluoro vs a fluoro leader.

[RumRiverRat]

I use fluorocarbon on a couple crankbait rods and on a jig/plastics rod.

Never bothered with leaders

[Jeff13]

One advantage to full spool of fluorocarbon is that you don't have to tie leaders and mess with tying knots connecting two different lines.

I think it's very sensitive and holds up good in cover if you buy some of the high end brands. I know guys who use braid and tie the fluorocarbon leader and have higher sensitivity. I do want to experiment with that this year to see what I prefer, but for a lot of applications I believe you can just spool it.

[thatoneguy]

Don't worry about tying a knot on the leader - the modified Albright is super simple to tie and pretty much bulletproof. I prefer to spool braid and tie on a fluoro leader as needed.

[delmuts]

I use braid with a leader on most of my rods, but part of that is do to not having much feeling in my hands so I need all the sensitivity I can get. I do use straight flouro on my crank bait rod, and one spinning rod spool for walleye.( use it when it is to cold to use braid) If using it on a spinning reel I don't recommend going over 6 or 8 lb. due to if it is cool/cold it will uncoil. On a bait caster you have no problems. There has been some great info on here about the uses of flouro!

[RK]

On spinning gear about the only time I use braid with a leader is fishing small jerkbaits and occasionally small topwaters. I will very rarely add a fluoro leader to braid on casting gear - usually swim jigs in clear water or lipless cranks, which I like to fish on braid.

Since braid came out I've tried several times to like it for finesse type presentations like jigworms or tubes or grubs. I keep going back to straight fluoro (well, was straight mono until fluoro came around). Yes, braid is more sensitive, but only when there is tension on the line. I hate not being able to feel slack line bites, which you can't with braid.Maybe I'm too used to the sense of feel with non-braid, but I could just never get to like braid for finesse stuff. Plus I never have liked the extra knots and messing around with leaders - but that's more my laziness than anything practical

If you spool fluoro, be conscious of which fluoro you go with. Some are a lot stiffer and don't work well at all on spinning gear. I've used Sunline Super Sniper on spinning gear the last few seasons and liked it a lot. I used Invisx before that and it wasn't bad either.

With fluoro, you get exactly what you pay for. The higher end stuff is worth it, IMHO.

[beeflover]

I fish flouro for about everything except I have a heavy rod with braid for froggin and punchin and one rod with mono for topwaters. I don't know why you would want anything but flouro with a crank bait and for finess its the best.

Use 10 lb and a baitcaster for bigger cranks and 6 or 8 lb on a spinning reel for finesse, deep drop-shot, small cranks.

I don't usually use full spools but half spools to save dough.