Well since you apparently prefer to follow the crowd and believe everything you’re told as opposed to experiencing things for yourself and living in reality, I would suggest that you don’t step out and try anything other than what you’ve already been told. Hold your line and stay simple. OP was asking about tippet, not your simple views. I answered. If you don’t like my answer feel free to run your mouth. Maybe you’ll impress someone other than your mommy.

Without trying to sound too condescending or arrogant, and not adding my comments here as an attack, I’m going give a very different take than you have.

I have fished seemingly my entire life. As part of that I’ve been fly fishing since the mid 80’s. I went through a solid 15 years or so of feeling superior to all other types of fishing while dry fly fishing exclusively. Fortunately I’m not that guy any more and I enjoy various fishing methods these days.

About 80% of my fishing these days is fly fishing, and about 80% of that is done with my 7’-6” 0wt rod. It is very effective and extremely fun. I have no problems catching and landing trout up to 20” long. Admittedly most are much smaller than that, but ‘biguns’ do come along time to time.

Let me use an analogy here: Some people love to drive ‘intelligent’ cars these days because the vehicles are intuitive and do a lot of the work for you. Others like me prefer to advance our personal skill set as opposed to having the vehicle do it for them. Both methods have merit. I simply pride myself on my experience and skill level as opposed to enjoying built in vehicle functionality.

If OP (or you, or anyone for that matter) chooses to challenge themselves to increase their skill level by going smaller and lighter with their gear, and still being productive, then proper gear and time on the water will be very effective and extremely rewarding.

A 1wt rod certainly will turn over a leader. Provided the leader matches the rod and circumstances.

Since I already typed in a book here, I don’t want to take up a lot more time. I recommend watching the Mad River Outfitters videos on leaders. Specifically watch his explanations regarding building leaders.

His video entitled ‘The most important leader video I’ve made’ does an excellent job of clearly explaining how to build a leader. The entire video is good and contains solid information. After about the 15 minute mark or so, he explains the difference between contact and no contact fishing. This should basically answer OP’s original questions.

Anyway, no matter how you go about it - I wish you all happy fishing and great luck!