Part of my wet fly lessons includes leader construction. As we’re building a team of three flies, I tell students that the single best material I’ve found for dropper rigs is 4-lb. Maxima Ultragreen. In fact, I tell them, it’s the only stuff I use. But every once in a while, I try to cheat the process and make the tag with some other stuff, thinking it will be OK. And it usually isn’t.

The most recent incident came last week when I tied a simple two-fly wet fly team for smallmouth. I lazily decided to attach a piece of Maxima Ultragreen to the end of the tapered 3x leader. A few casts into my fishing, the non-Maxima tag section was already tangling. What do you know? I re-rigged the leader with Maxima Ultragreen 4lb for the dropper tag and point fly, and suddenly all was right with the world.

How much do I love and use this stuff? I buy it in the One Shot spool size, which gets you 280 yards of glorious green dropper goodness. I just wrap 30 yards of it around a smaller spool, and it fits easily into my pack or on my tippet holder. It’s so true: confidence catches fish.