Fuzzy, I gotta pick a fight. Tell me how to run a 10 ft plus rod on a brush infested river and toss 8 feet of line twenty yards next to wood sweepers, without hanging up your gear. Load up a sliding float, fish a three foot leader and stagger your shot on the leader. Gradual stagger for slow, and rapid stagger for fast water.

I'd put a slider against a fixed float in that scenario every time. You can also dance a jig through slow frog water without horsing up your drift. Most of it depends on how you weight your float. We get lots of fish, where the float just wiggles, hitches, or rises a 1/4 or 1/2 inch on the surface of the water. Like a crappie bite.

There isn't a right or wrong way to do it, but I can walk a long stretch of water, adjust to different depths a lot quicker with a slider than I can with a fixed float. To me, it's all about time spent in the water fishing. More time in the water, more fish. You can run a modifed rig with a bead an bobber stop below your float, if you fish a chunk of water where you want to lean back on the float. That way, you can go form a sliding set up to a fixed set up, by adjusting the lower bobber stop.

The aggressive approach on jigs works well where you are. I have fished out there, and it's pretty hard to boot a fish on a jig set up. If you fished here for these spooky pressured fish, and leaned on a float, you would just be watchin your float all day without a fish. These fish in 33 degree water want an absolute dead drifted jig, tied sparse (2 or 3) light hackle tips on a 1/32 or 1/64 jig. Maybe a maggot or calamari tentacle for odor in cold water. You may want to try it on your spooky summer fish. There are a couple guys out your way trying some of this stuff on summer runs, and they are cashing in on it.

Good luck, and good fishin. :p