Best Leader for Snook and Tarpon

The size of the fish you’re targeting and the environment in which you’re fishing will determine which of these leaders is best for you. If you are fishing in an area where a snook or tarpon could potentially get you stuck on something, you will want to use the strongest leader possible. Your main fishing line is typically the main line that comes off the reel, and it’s recommended to be braided because it’s a lot lighter weight.

However, braid is more vulnerable to being cut than a monofilament or fluorocarbon leader. The difference between monofilament and fluorocarbon is that one is supposed to be strong but also costs more than the other.

One of the things you should keep in mind is that if you’re going to be using a leader, say 80lb with a braided line of around 65lb, depending on the knot you’re going to use to connect your main line to the leader, we can use the double uni knot as an example. If you were to use 80lb monofilament to try and tie to the 65lb braided line, being how thick the 80lb monofilament leader is, you will likely not get a good amount of wraps to make your knot, and that will make things not good in many ways. One huge issue is that you might end up using your 80lb monofilament leader to slip over your 65lb braided line if you end up with a big fish on.

The other issue you will end up with is likely having the knot get stuck inside your rod eye guides when you are reeling your line up, depending on how long your leader is.

That being said, if you were going to use a heavy leader with lite fishing line, then you might consider what knot would work best for you to avoid this problem.

Leader, I recommend:

ANDE Mono Leader 40lb

ANDE Mono Leader 50lb

ANDE Premium monofilament is our standard production monofilament and is perfect for the vast majority of anglers. It is a medium-soft monofilament with excellent tensile and knot strength and it is very abrasion resistant.