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BooBoo
Posts: 263 Deckhand
Leader making
BooBoo
Posts: 263 Deckhand
What is your preferred recipe for making your own leaders for inshore fishing? Or, do you prefer buying your tapered leaders?
Replies
Just throwing this out there.
99% of the questions I ever had about saltwater fishing are answered in this old book by Vic Dunaway.
Available for almost nothing on Amazon.
All forms of tackle, hooks, rigging, bait, tactics for fish, etc.
It's not even a fly book (it won't tell you anything about flies).
Excellent stuff on knots and leader.
Might not have some of the new, super-fancy knots (yeah, I'm looking at you Slim Beauty)
grace finds goodness in everything ...
Now thats my my kind of preplanning!
Tapered leaders are a lot easier tho.
Used to make leaders for FW (trout) doing the blood knot deal before tapered leaders became popular (+40 years ago).
I’ve caught pretty much everything using one, including bonefish in gin clear water.
So after reading this thread I looked up on the YouTube how to make furled leaders and found a vid that showed how to twist one up without a jig
.
Sat down to watch the Field of Dreams game with a nice cocktail and spool of 30#, 20#, and 12# mono. the cheap stuff.
Last Friday, I thought I'd cast some flies at the dock lights at night on the North Indian River. So I looped on one of the 2x20 (twist), 1x20, blood knot to 12# and a short 20# bite tippet.
To my surprise that leader rolled out nicer than almost any other heavy leader I normally fish. OK, you've got my attention.
Later that night I hooked into Mr. Lineside Bigmouth and giggled as he wrapped that 2x20 twist around a barnacle studded dock pole. I sat there and waited 2-3 minutes until he ran out of leader to wrap around the pole and decided to swim in the other direction and unwind himself. Exhausted and confused, he happily swam to the boat to be unhooked.
I may be crazy, but I think the look on his face when I released him said what the heck? That busting off the leader on the dock pole trick always works. What are you using for a leader man?
I beat the heck out of that leader all night, bouncing it off docks, tossing it past poles and stripping back up current rubbing against them with fish on. Not one bust off come Saturday morning. It may be overkill for East Central mud fishing but I may be a mono furled leader guy now......
If you don't like your like your loop or things are hinging and splashing down hard you can get progressively stiffer mono
Fishing line = soft
Look at dia not just test.
The dia of butt section should be 75% of the fly line tip dia.
Once you know dia of the tip of fly line pick the correct line from the above menu to taste.
Pick your tippet and once you know your tippet dia then split the difference to find the mid section dia.
You can make this much more scientific but that's the general idea.
FYI. For furled leaders I use regular fishing mono as noted.
Booboo - you're definitely on the right track... I've written about the way I set up my gear on more than one occasion -but I'll go through it again... I rig all of my fly lines the same way - with a permanently attached butt section as follows:
7wt - 30lb mono (Ande Premium my usual choice) 3-4' long with a surgeon's loop at the bitter end.
8 and 9wts, 40lb mono - 4- 4 1/2' long
10wt- 50lb mono, 5' long
11 and 12wts, 60lb mono, 5 1/2 - 6' long
These are all the first step in building a reasonable, rational quick change leader system. The rest of the leader always has a surgeon's loop for a loop to loop connection - whether it's a simple "poor boy" leader (straight 20lb fluoro, about four feet for an 8 or 9wt setup and no bite tippet, mostly...), or a full bore IGFA legal class tippet with a bite tippet at the bitter end. All of my class tippets are made out of Mason Hard mono (usually 20lb unless my angler is required by club rules to use something lighter - and each one with a fluoro bite tippet (some call them shock tippets...) as light as 30lb - but might range all the way up to 80lb if needed...
NOTE: I haven't fished bonefish in more than 10 years now - and day or night we're either in the Everglades or working around docklights or bridge shadows at night... Bonefish leaders setup differently since you're tossing small flies and need a very subtle presentation.... but that's a topic for another day...
Hope this helps...
"Be a hero... take a kid fishing"
Bob LeMay
(954) 435-5666
Bob LeMay
(954) 435-5666