Quote:
Shortening or lengthening a leader can solve more casting problems or presentation issues than a line taper....
I routinely fish midges on 7 & 6wts and that is heresy in today's 2 - 3wt world.
Lots of truth right there.
When I started flying in the '70s, it was with an 8 1/2' 9wt and the old guys said use an AirCell DTF but cut off almost all the level section at the front of the taper ~3' iirc. WE all fished #16-#24 in still ponds for trout and used a dynamic sort of roll cast. -still clear spring fed ponds for trout.
We also used those very same rigs in the Bay for casting streamers to salty stripers, blues and such and in the Palmer River for American Shad when the run came. I now use 7&8wts in Ozarks creeks for SMB and the spring branches for trout with flies from #20-#2.
This is my thinking, ymmv.
Double taper was/is to give twice the wear factor with a particular line. Not so much a factor with plastic lines as it was with silk, I think, some of my lines are likely twenty years old, maybe more.
Weight forward/shooting heads/most lines today shift most of the weight to the front end of the line so that the cast is more like throwing a large sinker, most of the line is shot- whereas the level line (as versatile as any taper-maybe more so) and the DT require the casting of long sections of line, keeping almost the entire cast length in the air.
Triangle taper with it's small running line would almost need to be twice as long to accommodate another head at the other end, this also applies to WF lines, you can think of TT as a very long head WF, it beats WF at roll casting or mending because the head is as long as most of us cast.
Level line is all casting/mending line end to end, DT takes the L and reduces the diameter so that leaders can start with smaller diameter material and thus be shorter. Both these can be roll cast or mended end to end because the weight is distributed over the entire length.
When shooting was developed as a cast it was a piece of heavy line coupled with a small running line- think 10-12wt 20-30' long tied to 20# casting line, a shooting head. This morphed into WF and all the other pseudo tapers that are WF by another name that we have today. None of these lines can be roll cast or mended past the length of the head, simply because the running line is too small and too soft to do so-it can't move the head because it is of lesser mass.
My two cents is that weight not taper makes versatility with 7-8 wts being an ideal compromise for most fly fishing. Then Level being the most useful taper for medium and large flies, DT being more a compromise to small flies as it adds control to the transition of energy from line to leader and all the varieties of WF being the best for distance casting/throwing because of the shorter line held in the air as the false casting is done.