This month Nick Thomas gives us an insight into his preferances when it comes to leaders.
Recently a cancelled business trip to the US courtesy of their government budget squabbles gave me a free week so I took an unplanned trip to Garnffrwd on a bright autumn Monday. I hadn't been for a few months as I'd been concentrating on carp and saltwater fly fishing through the summer heat. I had a great day wandering around the lake fishing the bays and inlets while looking at the autumns colours and wildlife. I even caught a few fish on a challenging day when a constant change of tactics from deep nymphing to fishing dries and emergers was necessary to find feeding trout.
While I was sitting watching the lake over a cup of coffee I got to thinking about leaders. Let's get this on the table first - I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to leaders. But when you think about it what's wrong with that? Fly fishermen invest loads of time and cash in selecting their rods, reels and fly lines and agonise over which of their hundreds of flies to tie on the end. Many virtually ignore the vitally important bit that comes between all that expensive gear and effective delivery of the fur, feather and metal on the end. I've seen anglers using top of the range pre-looped fly lines costing £60-£70 with 6lb level fluorocarbon tied on with a blood knot; that's as sensible as looping cheese wire round your finger (or other appendage) and pulling hard. The leader will cut into the loop and rapidly destroy the end of the fly line; and then people wonder why their expensive line doesn't float any more.
The whole purpose of a leader is to transmit the energy of the cast smoothly through from the fly line to the fly to deliver it where you want it to go and for it to arrive in a way that it's fishing effectively. This applies equally to a size 18 trout dry fly, a size 4 carp beetle or a 2/0 pike or saltwater baitfish pattern. Achieving effective energy transfer needs two things; a non hinging joint and a leader than can conduct energy smoothly and efficiently. Level leaders tied to a fly line loop fail on both these counts. The joint acts as a hinge and the level leader is a poor conduit for the energy of the cast which often results in the whole thing ending up in a heap on the water. The effective solution is to use a tapered leader attached to the fly line with a non-hinging loop joint that smoothly and progressively passes on the casting energy through to tippet and fly.
I fish for trout, carp, bass, mullet, pollack or anything else I can catch on a fly rod. My biggest surprise to date was a turbot that took a Clouser fished off a west Wales surf beach, but that's a story for another time. All of these fish species and fishing methods have different leader requirements depending on the weight of fly line on one end and the size and weight of fly on the other. Leader choice will also vary with the season. In the winter most of my fishing is nymphing for stillwater trout using tapered nylon or intermediate polyleaders. From spring through summer and into autumn these days I invariably fish dry flies, either for trout or coarse fish using a furled leader. The only exception is when good weather and tides tempt me away to the sea when my heavyweight tapered mono leaders come out to play.
After a lot of trial and error these are the tapered leaders that I use for all my fishing:
- Frog Hair copolymer 9.5 feet with a 9lb point. Used for all my stillwater trout fishing with a Frog Hair fluorocarbon tippet between 4lb and 8lb for fishing nymphs and emergers.
- RIO bonefish tapered monofilament, 10 feet with a 13lb point. These get used for saltwater with a 12lb RIO saltwater hard tippet to cope with abrasion from sand and rocks.
- Airflow intermediate polyleader, 9 feet. These get occasional use for stillwater trout when I want to get an unweighted nymph down deeper or I need to anchor the leader and slow the drift of a floating fly line in a strong breeze. Tipped with 4lb to 8lb fluorocarbon depending on fly size.
- Furled leaders in various weights to match my fly lines in lengths from 4 to 9 feet. These have been a fairly recent revelation for me and I have a growing number in my collection from Orvis, Hemingway and other makers. They are always my leader of choice for dry flies, whether it's tiny F-flies for trout or big beetles and caterpillars for carp. I'm also increasingly using them for nymphing in preference to tapered mono leaders as they cast more accurately and turn over tippet much better than stiffer springy tapered nylon. Tippet fluorocarbon will range from 4lb for small trout flies to 12lb for big carp bugs.
I keep all my leaders in a mesh leader wallet with leaf sections to keep them separated with a section cut from the leader packet tucked into each leaf so I know which leader is which. When I'm packing away a leader I wrap the leader around the slightly opened fingers of my left hand starting with the tippet end. When the leader is coiled I bring my fingers together, slip off the coils and secure by wrapping the butt end around the coil a couple of times.
All leaders are joined to the fly line with a non-hinging loop to loop connection. Tippet is then joined on loop to loop via a perfection loop on the tippet. This knot is named for the way it perfectly aligns the tippet in the centre of the loop and not to one side as do other loop knots. It's a simple knot to tie and well worth learning. I only use two knots for fishing; the perfection loop for joining leaders and tippet and the Uni knot to attach the fly on the end. Both knots work well in different strengths of nylon and fluorocarbon and are easy to tie with cold hands and in poor light.
Don't be tempted to use too short a length of tippet with furled leaders, each leader usually has an optimum tippet length of 4-6 feet. Going too short will result in the leader kicking back at the end of the cast as it hasn't transmitted all the available energy to the fly. If you've ever cast a fly line without a leader on the end you'll know what I mean.
For freshwater fishing I always treat my tippet with degreasing mud before use, whether I'm fishing a dry fly or a nymph. I've tried sinkants from a number of suppliers and now routinely use the stuff from Fulling Mill; it's a stiffer mixture than other brands and makes a good job of both removing grease and taking the shine off fluorocarbon. If you are using Gink or another floatant on your fly, do the degreasing of your tippet first and then apply the Gink. A little floatant goes a long way and any residue on your fingers will defeat your attempts to get your tippet to sink. It's pretty obvious when you think about it, but I see lots of anglers doing it the other way round and wondering why fish turn away from their fly.
Fishing for carp effectively with a dry fly is the toughest test of a good leader and tippet set up I know, particularly at the end of the season in the autumn when the fish may have seen a awful lot of floating offerings. If you can construct an effective leader set up to consistently hook carp it will put you in good stead for surface fishing for other fish. I use a five foot furled leader matched to the fly line weight with the whole leader treated with Gink. A five foot tippet of 10lb or 8lb fluorocarbon is then looped on, the fly tied on the end with a five turn Uni knot and the last two feet of tippet is thoroughly degreased. The last important step is to grasp the fly and tippet firmly and stretch to remove any kinks in the tippet near the fly that remain from tying the knot. Before I did this routinely I would sometimes have problems with the tippet next to the fly not sinking because a bent section would stubbornly curve up from the hook eye
This set up efficiently delivers all the power from the fly line right through the leader to the tippet to turn over and stealthily deliver a bulky foam or deer hair fly to where I want it. Everything except the tippet nearest the fly floats so as not to spook fish that would otherwise bump the leader when approaching the fly, but the last bit of treated and stretched tippet sits just under the surface where the fluorocarbon's refractive index minimises visibility to fish at the critical moment as they approach to slurp the fly. If the fish consistently reject the fly on this set up I'll drop the tippet strength down to 6lb; the difference may look marginal to us, but it can make a big difference to the fish.
If you don't use tapered leaders, especially furled ones, I'd really recommend that you give it a try. It will make fishing a more pleasurable experience and it will catch you more fish. There's great satisfaction to be had in selecting a good leader, carefully and methodically setting it up and then casting and seeing the whole length turn over straight as an arrow on target. Sure, a good leader will cost you up to £10 or more, but if you take care of them they'll easily last a season's fishing or longer, which on a cost per trip basis is cheaper than using yards and yards of level fluorocarbon and binning the whole kinked mess at the end of the day.
Nick Thomas lives in South Wales. He started fly fishing on Scottish hill lochs many years ago and continues to design tie and fish flies for trout, carp, bass and anything else that’s going