As a charter captain and professional outdoor writer for more than 20 years, I'm sure you can appreciate that I'm given a lot of new products to field test.

Most are so hideous, they hit the "round file" long before they ever see the inside of my boat. But when I was recently given a sample of your new Tyger Leader it had some intriguing qualities that I suspected could be put to good use.

That time came in January during the West Palm Beach Fishing Club's 2002 Silver Sailfish Derby -- one of the oldest and most prestigious billfish tournaments in the country.

Since boats are limited to four rods at any time, I like to run a spread with two bridled live baits off a kite, one on a rigger flat line and one down deep, either by sinker or downrigger. The deep bait has often proven to be a "secret weapon" of my sailfish arsenal, because commotion on the surface will often drive the fish deep during a tournament.

Unfortunately, the deep baits also draw more hits from wahoo, king mackerel and other toothy critters so I need to include a short wire trace above the hook on that rig -- or risk unknowingly slow-troll a hookless mono leader.

Unfortunately, Sailfish can be extremely finicky about mouthing stiff wire leaders, so when I told my tournament partner that I was going to "try something new" he was understandably nervous about my crucial timing to experiment.

I told him to trust me, because I had a feeling Tyger wire would be just the ticket and it ended up performing just as advertised -- beautifully!

To the best of my knowledge, we did not lose a sailfish as a result of the fish mouthing the bait and spitting it out due to the wire's extreme flexibility, and its durability allowed us to use maximum pressure on hooked fish during the fight -- particularly at boatside.

I would not hesitate to recommend your innovative product to anyone and plan on making it a regular component in my own tackle box.

FYI: I rigged 12 inches of gold-colored #50 Tyger wire to 12-feet of 60-lb blue-grey Jinkai mono via an Albright knot and then attached the wire to a 5/0 Siwash-style sailfish hook via a perfection loop for sailfishing and it worked great.

Tight lines,
Capt. Bob Michals