For you drift fishers who use slinkies, how do you prefer to rig them -- attached to a snap swivel that's tied directly to your leader, or attached to a snap swivel that's left to slide freely above your leader setup?

In my case, I usually opt for the latter, sliding my slinky [with snam swivel] onto the main line, then sliding on a small bead, then attaching about a two foot leader that that's tied to a barrel swivel. This setup seems to work well for me, but truth be told it's the only setup I've tried (it was taught to me by a friend).

Advice? Comments? Suggestions? Does one setup outfish the other, or is it a wash?

It really depends on what kind of water you are drifting, is it real snaggy? Are you casting upstream to get into a slot? Sometimes you want to have a slider, other times you will not. I prefer lead, but will use a slinky if the bottom is real snaggy, or you could use lead with a drinking straw around it, this also snags less, cause straight lead seems to stick to rocks. The options are many. The most important thing is to know what your lead feels like when tumbling down the river, so you can distinguish those sometimes light takes.

Like Kore said it mostly a personal preference. I fish both ways, I never fisha sliding wieght when using bait. It doesnt cast to well, sometimes the bait wieghs more than your lead and when you cast you usaully end upwith a backlash.....

I run both, sliders allow you to feel pickups quicker, but you'll find that they don't sink as fast and are a bit more snag proned. So if fishing faster water where you need to get down quick or real grabby bottoms, its usually best to run a fixed. Also run a fixed if your free spooling, a slider in this situation may hang on the bottom while the rest of your leader keeps going downstream. Ditto on the comment about bait, especially eggs, they seem to get caught in the wind and your slider will run up your main line.

But if you're fishing usual flows with reasonable bottoms and swinging through the drift, you can't beat a sliding slinky.