I used to fish all the time with 6x tippet, but I got tired of breaking fish off or having to let them run to exhaustion. Now the only time I go that light is on size 22 or smaller flies, when I don't want my knots to be bigger than the fly.

I'm surprised we haven't heard a scathing reply regarding tippet and fly size matching from Sayfu yet.

For the steelhead I chase I rarely go lighter than 3X and never lighter than 4X.
I'd much rather break off after a short spectacular run or series of acrobatics than play a fish to exhaustion.
I've seen more than I care to of dead or dying fish caused by folks trying to coax fish in using nano thin tippets.

Fly fishing like any sport is as technical as you want it to be. When I first started fly fishing I was told to get all size tippets and leaders and fish certain ones depending on where I was and what I was fishing for. I did this for a while until I met and fished with an older gentleman, who I now fish with regularly who looked at all my packs of leaders and spools of tippet and just started laughing. He then pulled out a spool of 4# mono just like you would use on your spinning rod and out fished me something stupid. Now I still use leaders and tippet and he still uses plain spool line but it does go to show you that it's all in the angler and his confidence in his gear. He saw no need to ever get into leaders and tippets and he can fish plain straight line like a champ because that's all he's ever done.

size always matters!

Back in the day George Harvey showed this. Apparently, he poked beetles with extremely thick mono (or glued it to them) and threw them in the river. The fish gobbled them up. It's the drift and not the tippet that matters.

Fezzant's right! Use to do the same thing and had clients. Now I tell them just by 5x or maxima. Saves them money, fish and fight for the fish. I don't know much about the manufacture of tippet, but I can't imagine one small company purchasing all that esoteric equipment to sell tippet when they could contract someone and change the label to .... instead of maxima. So in my little grey area between my ears they are nearly... operative word...nearly the same. Save money buy Maxima or similar.
As a test I've even taken Maxima and put it on a 'brand name' spool, given it to a few professionals and had them use it. They never knew the difference.

I lost part of my left arm 8 years ago but I didn't lose my love of fly fishing. I pretty much use 4# mono for trout and 8# for everything else. I can still tie the knots, it just takes me so much longer to do so that I got lazy and noticed I didn't catch any less fish. Honestly I am surprised it wasn't just me being happy I could still fly fish?

Someone once said there are three things that matter when fly fishing ....presentation, presentation and presentation.
I exclusively use #4 and #6 fluoro tippet except for size 20 and smaller. While I enjoy dry fly fishing immensely, I increasingly find myself fishing emergers much more these days. Rarely are my patterns smaller than 14, and I still manage to out fish most on the river, and to some very selective trout.

This is a great topic because I was pondering on this the other day after I replaced my $40 5X RIO. It's insane what we pay for tippet, and like what a couple of the fella's stated, so why not buy larger spools of 4 or 5# at a cheaper price. It makes sense.

Another great, thought-provoking article. My response: yeah, maybe. I've had moments with 7X on the Missouri fishing on top for monster sipping browns....and I knew I needed the ultra-light tippets to float the tiny bugs just right. And I've been guided by pros on the Arkansas who insisted that 3X was all I needed, and proved it to me. I do agree that I've lost way too many fish because my tippet size was smaller than it needed to be when I hooked into a hot fish. I'll still fish 6X in Cheesman Canyon, thank you, because I need all the help I can get for those fish.