Interesting. One question I have is, how much fishing pressure does that water receive? And how much pressure over the winter? I think that could be a legitimate question as to how readily they would take the fly with the line/furled leader that close.
I fished a furled leader hard for about 1.5 years. I tried alot of them. I noticed that waters I fish that get pressured alot, my strike rates went down. Maybe it was just bad drifts, or bad presentations, or the wrong fly, or that I was just holding my mouth the wrong way, but when I switched back to my hand-tied tapered mono leaders (between 8 and 12 feet, depending on the water), my strike rate seemed to climb back up. I think the pressured fish, especially those in very clear water, were hesitant because of seeing the thickness of the furled leader so close to the fly. It was alot like "lining" a fish in some ways. Maybe I just have better confidence in my mono tapered leaders, but I do know that my strike rate climbed back up with them, and convinced me to stay away from furled leaders and stick with my hand-tied mono tapered leaders.