Reporting again: Just got off the phone with Larry Phillips of WDFW. I was not able to get a definition of what a leader is. He wants us to meet and have a discussion about the issue and wanted to make sure that we know he feels the issue is NOT about snagging.

I still believe that if we are going to discuss it and come to ANY sort of reasonable conclusion we have to have that definition. I tried....

I don't really care what it is, I just need to know what it is so I can comply with the regulation. How silly would it be to discuss it, figure out the regulation and THEN figure out the definition?

If there is a biological reason to regulate leader length lets go for it. But we need to know what the damn thing is.