One of the items on my to do list each winter is to snell up an ample supply of blackfish hooks. I use 80-pound Ande pink mono, snelled to a number 3 Virginia style Mustad hook. The heavy mono gives me a decent chance of hauling a slob tog or two from habitat that does a fine job of scarring your leader with nicks and scratches. The problem with mono as leader material is it has a lot of memory and is difficult to keep straight. As any sharpie knows, a straight leader fishes better than a twisted one. A neat trick I still use today is to fold a dollar bill to an inch and a half square, place the mono leader into the fold, and run it back and forth while applying firm pressure with the dollar bill. Do that until you feel heat created by the friction and your mono leader will be straight as an arrow.
