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foambug |
hand made leaders |
Lead | ||
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well i would like to know who make leaders and what type of line do you use ...what commercial brand ? i startied tying my own and am lookin for some imput
mike
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Shakeyfly.clarksclassicfl... |
#1 | |||
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I do make my own leaders. Primarily for Saltwater though.
I use RIO Hard Mono for the main section of line, but then I cap it off with Orvis Mirage Flouro Carbon. I sometimes use this same method when fishing ponds, but it really depends on the circumstance. All my Saltwater leaders are made of 3 pieces. 33lbs hard mono, 22 lbs Hard mono, and 20 lbs Orvis Fluoro. This recipe was given to me by a Local fly shop owner, Jim Bender of www.Thelowerforty.com . I have used this leader when fishing clousers for Freshwater bass, and have had great success with it. For freshwater, I have only used Frog Hair home tied leaders twice. Absolutely love em. But right now I am still depleteing my collection of Orvis and 3M leaders that I gathered last summer....
Now, if I could only learn the advantage and how to tie furled leaders..
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Flytackle |
#2 | |||
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Hey Foambug - I tie my leaders from Maxima Chameleon. It is excellent mono and a leader will generally last a full season, just changing the tippet and a
section above or two. I believe Cabelas has the full Maxima kit. I use other monos for the tippet section, generally because I found some tippet material for
cheap. A couple years ago I bought many spools of 2X Berkeley tippet material for pennies and it has worked great with the Maxima. A great thing about tying
your own leaders is that you can have a very long tag end on the barrel knot that attaches the tippet and use a dropper - very effective on 'gills and
perch! Tight lines, Alec
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Wee Hooker |
#3 | |||
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I rarely use hand made leaders for warmwater fishing unless the water is weed/algae free. ( I don't like picking bits of salad off my leader knots and am
too lazy to coat them.)
I do use hand made leaders exclusively in my SW flyfishing. I like Berkley Big Game spinning line for this purpose. It seems to have the right ratio of stiffness to flexability . It's also TOUGH and holds knots well. FWIW, I make my SW leaders simply in 2 sections which seems fine for turning over SW poppers and a pair of streamers. The finished leader is aroud 5.5' (20#) /2.5'(14#) with a 9" tag on the butt section left to clip off/tie in a point fly as I want. |
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spinzo |
#4 | |||
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Why all the fuss over leader building? Just tie a length of mono/fluoro to the end of your fly line and have at it. I've been using single piece leaders
(prefer Mason) for years with no trouble or discernable difference in my casting ability. Maybe it's simply that my casting is so poor that it doesn't
matter, but I have fun just the same.
Sanctus simplicitas, brothers. Sanctus simplicitas! Mike |
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Wee Hooker |
#5 | |||
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Ok Spinzo, I'll fess up. Sometimes when I'm fishing a clear intermediate line , heavy surf or thick bass cover (e.g. situation where leader length
is less critical,) I'll tie in a straight, 6' piece of 20# big game. If kept short like this, it seems to turn over a fly just fine.
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Gerbubble Bug |
Leaders | #6 | ||
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I too like knot-less leaders for Floating & Intermediate lines - 9'-10' Umpqua & replace tippet with Mirage Fluorocarbon. Tie up a leader for
sinking lines 1'-20lb test + 2-3' of 12 lb test - Orvis Mirage Fluorocarbon.
Tom |
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gillbuster |
Furled leader question | #7 | ||
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Want to try Furled Tapered Leaders this year after reading the following posts and very convincing below article. How many folks on the forum
have tried furled leaders? New to this leader concept, been a knot-less leader user fro years, but anything that will help my casting and fly presentation, I
am willing to try... Any thoughts from the forum
Take for example the Tomorrow River, my favorite stream. The Tomorrow is a beautiful, fairly small spring-fed trout stream in Central Wisconsin. Along its length through Portage and Waupaca counties the river changes faces, displaying characteristics of both spring creek and freestone. The required casts are more usually short than long and need to be accurate and delicate. One could say it is pretty tight water that presents some challenges to one's casting abilities. In confined areas there isn't the opportunity to have much fly line out the end of the rod. Often, the length of fly line needed, plus the leader for the right casting distance would be insufficient to load the rod for an overhead cast. Roll casting was more difficult as well with the ability to place so little line on the water to create enough tension to make the cast. A conventional tapered monofilament leader didn't help the situation, often refusing to turn over my fly or destroying the accuracy I needed. Using a furled leader, however, made life much easier for me. I could roll cast with confidence and accuracy. It didn't make any difference if I had enough fly line hanging outside the tip to load the rod or not. The suppleness and mass of the furled leader butt turned over, straightening the tippet and fly every time.
The furled leader improved my presentation in other ways too. The Tomorrow is very clear. It's trout inhabitants don't take kindly to sloppy casting fly fishers and leaders crashing and splatting the water's surface. One never scares only one trout with a bad cast, you know. Coming to my rescue once again, the furled leader would pick up with very little water disturbance and after the cast settle on the water's surface ever so gently, barely causing a dimple where it landed. Another reason I like the furled leader is that it helps make just about anyone's casting look good. It is a perfect learning tool. Two years ago I took my teen-age daughter on a float trip down Wisconsin's famous Bois Brule. We were in separate canoes manned by experienced Brule River guides. Before our trip I had set up my daughter's fly rod with a furled leader. Watching her enjoyably casting from her canoe a distance downstream was a real pleasure. In fact, had I not known that it was my daughter, I would never have guessed it as I observed her casting performance. The tight loops and graceful layout of the line and fly I saw showed attributes of an experienced fly caster, not a teenage girl on her first trip down the Brule.I had taken her fly fishing with me before, but she had not become a proficient fly caster yet. This time most of it was the leader. My guide even commented on it. Often, because of the general unfamiliarity with the furled leader, it is confused with the braided leader. The confusion is understandable. Literature about furled leaders is difficult to find. The leaders are not well known in North America or available through fly fishing retail outlets, while the braided leaders have been around a long time. Both braided and furled leaders are quite supple and their appearance is similar but there are major differences between them. The manufacturing processes are not at all the same. Braiding is a process resulting in leaders having a hollow air core. Braided leader butts are generally much bulkier than the furled leader butts since they have this hollow core. The air core tends to absorb and hold water, discharging it in a fine mist pattern during each cast. If one sees a small rainbow appear momentarily over the shoulder of another fly fisher while he's false casting, chances are he is using a braided leader. On the other hand, since the furled leader is constructed of densely twined strands, and not braided, the resulting leader butt is entirely solid throughout the cross-section of its diameter and absorbs or holds no water.
In his book Micropatterns, Darrel Martin also does a wonderful job of pointing out the delicacy of the furled leader and what a great tool it is for
fishing tiny flies. I discovered that the furled leader has as many benefits working with larger flies too. There is the delicacy, but also great deal of
power. The furled leader excels in long casts and punching a fly through windy conditions often present on open, big-water. I regularly depend on these leaders
while fishing lakes and the Lake Michigan bays along Wisconsin's famous Door County. Considering this, I use three different sizes of furled leaders; a
light, medium and heavyweight. All of the furled leaders I use are about 5 feet 9 inches in length. Adding the appropriate tippet material, I end up with
finished leaders ranging in length from 7 - 14 feet.
The lightweight size furled leader goes with all the small flies and light lines and rods I typically use on the smaller inland trout streams or for bluegill fishing -- from one to four-weight rods, size 12 and smaller flies. The medium size does duty with larger flies up to about a size 2 or 4, and anything smaller. I match up the medium-weight leader butt with 5wt. - 7wt. Lines. This leader is always on my main lake-fishing outfit, a nine-foot, six-weight. That leader will turn over sizable weighted streamers, nymphs and Clouser-type flies but I try not to ask too much of it. The heavyweight leader will manhandle big bass bugs, pike flies and the large saltwater flies on more formidable gear. There is only one design difference or modification from the light and medium weight leaders I found helpful to use with the heavyweight design. That difference is the addition of an "extender" section. The extender is an approximately 8" piece of stiff monofilament I permanently attach to the tippet end of the heavy weight leader. The extender can be used to attach a specific test tippet or a test tippet and then a shock tippet followed by the fly. All the furled leaders I use or have seen utilize loops to attach the leader to the fly line and to tie the various tippets to the leader. There are no noticeable hinging effects I have detected and, after five years of using the furled leaders, have found the system to work very well.
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ozarkgold |
#8 | |||
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Hi,
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