Let’s look at each of these characteristics. 

First of all, big fish (the ones you really want to catch) sometimes strike hard and almost always streak off with sudden bursts of speed. To survive these frantic runs, it’s best to have a leader with high Shock Resistance – when it’s wet! Not Dry! 

Most anglers test tippets and leaders by pulling slowly on them when they’re dry. The best test, of course, is under actual fishing conditions. 

Secondly, leader Turnover is very important, especially to beginning and intermediate fly casters. Even expert casters appreciate the ability of a leader to straighten easily as this allows them to use longer tippets for critical presentation.  The key to turnover lies in a radically new design that varies from the old "Butt-Taper-Tippet" concept. By using a "Butt-Transition-Tippet" approach, which took hundreds of trials to figure out, I can commonly fish with super-long tippets.

Lastly, and maybe even more critical than Wet Shock Resistance and Turnover, an important characteristic of a good leader is Low Memory. There’s nothing worse than having a Butt Section, a Transition Section and especially a Tippet Section that are all "kinky" and can’t be straightened. Kinks and coils add immensely to wind resistance and reduce the distance of your cast, not to mention the lousy presentation that results. You’ll find that all 3 sections of my Flat Butts have been treated to minimize memory. Also, they’ve been joined with the new "Quad Knot" which you should definitely be using to tie mono to mono.

I’m offering the Flat Butts in both Hi-Vis or Clear but I personally advocate the Hi-Vis. I also recommend nail knotting the leaders to your fly line. I use a 3-turn nail knot which is very easy to tie with the flat mono and results in an extremely small "football" connection. It moves through your guides with ease and has much less wind resistance than loop-to-loop connections.