Leader Materials

[podflyguy]

Hi all,

I've been tying leaders for a few months now and have had good success, but am having some trouble with longer dry fly leaders. I started tying with the Umpqua kit and using LeaderCalc formulas as a guide. I wasn't happy with the stiffness in the butt section of my leaders and decided to buy some Maxima Chameleon in .024, .022, .020, and .017 (basically 40 lb-20lb). Now I'm getting a pretty nasty hinge in the taper section causing my tippet to simply pile up in a heap with the fly. I suspect the Umpqua is still too supple from .015-2x.

I'm not sure if I should continue with more Chameleon or buy some Maxima clear or what to get a better transition between segments. Anybody have a suggestion?

Thanks

 

[gfen]

KISS.

You're just trying to buy more gear to make up for a lack of knowledge, thinking there's a magic bullet that'll make it all better. Rather than do that, learn what you've got going on.

First off, sounds like the leader you're tying for a long dry fly is doing exactly what its supposed to be doing, dropping the soft tippet into a pile at the end of the extended hard leader.

Try putting aside the highly complex and somewhat easily confusing LeaderCalc spreadsheet for a couple of lines of paper:

Pick one of the the Harvey dry fly leaders, long the standard in the sport, and tie it exactly as presented, with whatever materials you've got. Once you see how it behaves in use, then start to modify it based on the simple principle that the stiff butt turns over and bleeds off energy in the line from the cast so that the soft, limp, section falls into a loose, pile and provides a moment or two of extra time for line/leader drag to take its effect while the fly moves at the speed of the drift.

 

[TimMurphy]

Dear podflyguy,

Unless you are fishing with a 7 weight line or higher there really is no need to use anything more than .020 Maxima Chameleon for the butt section. Maxima is plenty stiff and will turn over a pie plate if you build the leader properly.

Chameleon in .020 will work just fine on line weights 6 on down. If you are tying leaders for use on a 3 weight line or smaller then you can even start with the .017.

I tie my trout leaders entirely with Maxima Chameleon except for the last two sections. One of them is a short 6" transition section and the last section is 24 to 30" of tippet. For those last two sections I use Umpqua or Orvis Super Strong or whatever else I have handy at the time.

I took one look at LeaderCalc and decided someone likes to tie knots more than they like to fish. I second using the Harvey leader formulas, I'm still using the book of formulas I got with a FFP leader tying kit 25 years ago. They still work great.

If you can build your leaders with a few less knots and less sections the odds are good that they will perform better for you.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

 

[jdaddy]

Based on simplicity and theory "less is more" has anyone tried Gary Borgers leader?

 

[Heritage-Angler]

jdaddy wrote:
Based on simplicity and theory "less is more" has anyone tried Gary Borgers leader?

Been using Gary's Unibody leader for over a decade. It works well, and really keeps things simple.

I play around with leaders alot, but always go back to the Borger setup. I like it for the same reason he came up with it - less knots. Using the 5/7 turn bloodknot is key for making those large jumps in diameter.

 

[gfen]

Basic formula for Borger, say down to 5x?

 

[Heritage-Angler]

4' Maxima Chameleon .020 5/7 bloodknot to
1' Maxima Chameleon .013 triple surgeon knotted to
2' of 3X tippet of choice, triple surgeon knotted to
2' of 5X tippet of choice

I like to use the triple surgeon's knot when going from Chameleon to tippet, as opposed to using a 5/7 blood knot. The difference in materials makes tying a blood knot a little tough.

BTW - that's for a dry fly leader, but you can easily replace the first foot of 5X with 4X, and leave a dropper off the knot of 4X for a nymph leader. When I do this, I usually make the 5X section about 2' long to avoid tangles/snagging.

For a 3wt, I'd sub .017 for the .020.

I use the above formula for 4 - 6 wt lines, and it works great. The "uni-body" part is the Maxima. One leader butt for all applications - just change tippet for what you're doing.

 

[gfen]

Turned out there was one listed in leadercalc so I gave it a try. Took me like 45 minutes to tie two blood knots before I gave up and tried to go fishing. Wasn't pretty.

I like your version better than the one in LC2007 which just seemed sort of... bland. 10" 02x, 38" 1x, 38" 4x, 10" 6x.

I'll have to give this a try. I think with a well designed leader and just getting used to short drifts, I can probably pull off dry fly fishing. The 10' much beaten up Harvey leader I was using was almost impossible to follow a hi-vis size 14.

 

[stevehalupka]

1-4x... that seems like a big skip.. i would lean 1-3-5 or 6. Seems like you would get some breakoffs at those, no?

I go 0 to 2, 5 or 6

edit: I guess 1-4 is not so bad, but pushing it.

 

[podflyguy]

Thanks for all the advice. I agree that most LC formulas use a ton of knots...like 8 knots for a 9 ft leader. This gets pretty annoying, so I appreciate the Harvey/Humphrey formulas. I think I will give the Borger formula posted here a try as well. Also, just wanted to clarify that I bought the .022 and .024 mostly for steelhead. Most of the trouble I've been having is with my 3 wt, so I will start off with .017 instead of .020. Still seems that I need to buy some smaller sizes of Maxima Chameleon to make the Harvey formulas work for the "stiff mono" designated sections.

 

[dryflyguy]

I've been tying a dryfly leader that consists of a 36" butt section made of orvis hy-flote.
Then the rest of it is made of stren low vis mono line. That stuff is very limp.
I like this better than the George Harvey leaders