Every line thread ends the same way: three camps, zero converts. Because everyone is arguing about the wrong thing — the line isn't the decision, the situation is.
Frogs over slop: braid, no main-line debate exists, fifty-pound, done. Clear water, finesse, fish that have seen every bait in the shop: fluorocarbon earns its price exactly here. Topwater with treble hooks, cranking, anything where a little stretch saves a pulled hook: mono never stopped being right, it just stopped being marketed.
The dirty secret of the debate: half the fluoro loyalty out there is sunk-cost bias on a $25 spool, and half the braid evangelism is guys who fish one technique defending it as a worldview.
Leader formulas, knot pairings, and the one setup where we'll die on the mono hill — all below. Then tell us why we're wrong about yours.