Well I have had a completely different experience. I have a leaf net and I absolutely love the heck out of it. It is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I bought it last fall and didn't close my pool during the winter. I only used the leaf net.
I will absolutely be putting it on when the leaves start to turn this year. I also use it for any time we are supposed to have strong thunderstorms and I've used it this summer a couple times when we've gone on vacation and had my mom just coming over to add daily bleach.
The neighbors with the house behind mine have an evil Bradford Pear tree in their yard. It drops stuff in my pool year round. Fall and winter is leaves, early spring starts with the flower petals and full flowers then onto late spring through summer with the remnants of the flowers which look like blackberries with no juicy stuff. Now we are in mid to late summer and it is dropping the "pears" which are pretty much like green marbles that fall directly to the bottom of the pool and roll around with the current.
Here's a few pictures!
This one is from the fall when I put it on for the first time.
Here's how it looked when the leaves started falling.
Here's how the pool looked this spring when we had a strong thunderstorm and I ran out of time before work to put it on.
Here is my arch nemesis.
It is relatively easy to put on and take off and I've even figured out how to zip tie it on the sides by my ladder so I don't have to remove the ladder to use it. (I've only done this on the 2 times I went out of town. If I were to put it on for a storm I think it'd be fine unless it was a tropical storm/hurricane. I am just paranoid when I'm on vacation and didn't want mom to have to figure it out if it starting coming loose because of the ladder.)
Some extra info:
When it's on I usually use my leaf net skimmer to clean everything off somewhat regularly. It is nice because the skimmer gets heavy for me when I am reaching towards the center of the pool and I can sort of rest it on the net a little which helps with the weight of the pole/skimmer.
Small stuff does go through but it stops most of the leaves and the petals and most of the stupid berry looking things. I can vacuum without taking the net off and I even vacuumed a few times last year during the winter. I just loosen the wire that holds it and lift the side of the net up to stick the vacuum under and after I do a section I move around lifting up another part and throwing the original part back over the edge so I only have a little off at a time.
There you go. That's my leaf net review!
This should be a link to the net I bought. I posted a review there too.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WKF9ZW/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1