I've pretty much given upon the original dropper loop.
I do a lot of my own rigging, and here's a rig I came up with that works like a dropper loop with a few advantages. I came up with this about a few years back for fishing macks and smelt up north around Esco County and BKR. I call it the drop slide rig, my buddy who's now using it as well calls it the JD dropper.... LOL but we both have had very good luck with it.
Here's the logic behind it. I like the dropper loop for fishing macks because if you keep the line tight on the drop they can't twist up the line and I like the fact it keeps them under control and off the bottom when the rig is down. The drawbacks of a traditional dropper are the poor knot strength, the fact that if the fish takes the bait he has to take two lines in his mouth instead of one, and if you try to let them run with the bait they end up feeling the weight if they run much at all.
To get around all this I came up with this: I take a small 1/4 inch long piece of clear 3/16 tubing and slide it on my mainline. I then tie the hook on with a palomar knot. That's pretty much a 100% connection from the fish to the reel when hooked up. I then tie 2 1/2 feet of ten pound test fluoro to the center of the tube with a uni or improved clinch (my preference)I then I tie the other end of the ten pound to my weight.
When hanging with the line tight it hangs and fishes just like a dropper and the mack or bait can raise hell but he just can't tangle it, but if you get a hit or a bump you can slack your line and let the fish or bait run, because the line will slide right through the tube.
It's worked for me halibut white seabass and on some decent La Jolla yellows.
When that fish picked up the squid, I threw the reel in freespool in order to get the rod out of the holder. Since the line freely slid through the tube it felt nothing until I tightened the line, when I felt it and hit it. I don't know how far it went with the squid before I set the hook but I do know it didn't have to drag the weight around. Once I hooked up I had a clean solid connection to the fish. That yellowactually hung up the sinker in the rocks at one point and he just popped it off. In fact that rig in the picture is the exact same rig I caught the fish on. All I did was tie a new weight on it for the picture. Check out the chaffing he definitely worked it.
For me the biggest factor is strength. I've lost a lot of good fish to breakoffs with the standard dropper. This way is much stronger. For instance here's a big black seabass I got on it and released.
That's a pretty big fish, and I got that fish on forty spectra with a thirty fluoro topshot. I pulled really hard on it once I realized what it was, but it would not break off and I ended up releasing it on top. In my book the rigs as just as a 100% as flylining with a hook and you can't say that about many bottom rigs.
All and all the rig is not really any more visible the a dropper loop does everything it can do, but with some real advantages, but that is just my take.
Hopefully some of you guys will have use for this. It definitely has worked for me...
Jim