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Leaders - part one

Our February 2001 contribution from Terry Lawton

The connection between fly line and fly is critical to good casting and presentation. It is also one of the least understood items of tackle. In the first of two articles, Terry Lawton looks at some of the factors that combine to make a good leader, or cast as it is known in England.

At a time when there are ever more variations of ready-made leaders on the market, it may seem a backward step to suggest that fly fishermen should start making their own. After all, knotless tapered (extruded) mono leaders and braided leaders have the one major advantage of no (or possibly only one) knot(s) to catch anything that might be floating on the surface of river or stillwater. But as good as they are, there are times when a specially-designed, hand-tied leader can be the answer to a particular casting or fishing problem. And designing and tying your own leaders does allow you to create compound tapers which are not available commercially.

At this stage it might be helpful to introduce a bit of terminology. For many English fly fishermen, the lengths of nylon attached to the end of a fly line are known as a cast. The thinnest end of the cast, to which the fly is tied, is known as the point. The Americans, being a practical lot, decided, I assume, that calling a cast a cast would cause confusion with the action of casting. So they call casts leaders and the thin end of the leader is the tippett. Generally speaking I tend to follow this reasoning and use the American terminology.

The leader's purpose

A leader's purpose is to provide a multi-purpose link between the end of a fly line and the artificial fly. It has to transfer and dissipate the energy created by casting, from the line to the fly, to allow the fly to turn-over at the end of the cast and land gently on the water. If the energy is not dissipated, then the fly will land on the water with a splat that is guaranteed to frighten fish. The leader must provide the least-visible link between line and fly and also be supple enough not to disturb the natural flow or movement of the artificial. You do not want a leader that is going to make your fly drag, in a river, or act unaturally in a stillwater.

As no angler would consider using an untapered, level fly line, so no one should ever use a level leader. Fly line tapers have been improved for many years and are still being. Tapered lines are much easier and more efficient to cast and offer greater delicacy in delivering an artificial fly to a feeding fish. A leader is no different and is just as important a part of your tackle as the line and rod.

Knotless tapered leaders are convenient to use if there is a lot of surface weed that might get caught on the knots in a knotted leader. But as soon as you have to add a tippet, you then have a knotted leader. Braided tapered leaders have their advocates and although they last a long time, they are expensive to buy. One big problem with them is that they pick-up water that can spray out on your forward cast and perhaps frighten fish. All manufactured leaders suffer from one major fault: they are designed to deal with the average fishing situation. Their performance will suffer as soon as you get away from the average for which they were designed. Designing and tying your own leaders eliminates this problem.

Leader design

A key factor in leader design is to control energy dissipation. And a leader's taper affects this function. A short, stiff taper may turn-over a fly too quickly, whereas a long, slow taper may not achieve a satisfactory turn-over, or even any turn-over at all. The aim is to design a leader that will produce the best turn-over and thus deliver your fly gently and accurately to its target. Smooth dissipation of energy and good turn-over is helped by matching the stiffness and flex of the butt section of the leader to the end of the fly line as this will help transfer energy smoothly from line to leader. As well as selecting material for the butt of the leader that has the right flexibility, you want a material where the diameter is approximately two-thirds that of the fly line. (See chart)

In very simple terms, a leader starts thick and ends up thin. But how that transition is achieved can be very complex. The most simple leader will consist of three lengths of nylon and just two knots. More complex leaders may be made-up from anything up to nine or 10 lengths of nylon. However many lengths of nylon, don't have too big a drop in thickness between one length and the next. To keep the drop within the generally recommended limit of .002 of an inch, you may have to use more sections. As it is acceptable to have a butt section that is approximately 65 per cent of the thickness of the fly line, it should be OK to use this measure for the leader itself.

Although most leaders are designed to have a straight taper from butt to tippet, compound or reverse tapers can be created. The leader equivalent of a weight forward fly line.

Leader length

How long is the ideal leader? A nine foot leader, or one the same length as your rod, will be all that is needed for a vast majority of most anglers' fishing. Long, light leaders need higher casting speeds. Slower casters are better-off with shorter leaders as are anglers who employ only short casts most of the time.

Using very long leaders for short casts will prove to be positively harmful. The damage is caused by not being able to extend enough line beyond the rod tip to load it properly. A long length of nylon will not load the rod: you must have the right length of fly line beyond the tip ring so that the rod will load properly. There will, quite simply, not be enough energy in your casting to extend and turn-over a long leader. Yes a long leader will keep the end of the fly line away from a wary fish, but so will a different presentation, for example casting more across a river or dropping your fly a little nearer to the fish, so the end of the line is, relatively, further away from the fish.

Choice of leader material

No two fishermen will agree which is the best leader material: we all have our personal preferences. Like so many things in fly fishing, it is important to use a make of material in which you have confidence and know how to knot properly. Some materials are easier to knot than others and some knots work better with one brand of material than another. Do benefit from your own experience but also listen to what other anglers have got to say too, particularly those whose skills and knowledge you respect. Mono that has low stretch will have the highest knot break strength. Another point to check is that your choice of material is available in the diameters that you will need: some makes are available in more thicknesses than others and some thicknesses are available only in larger spools than others.

Hard and stiff or soft and flexible material? One man's stiff material may be another's soft. There is a lot to be said for using just one make of material for a complete leader: one that is neither excessively stiff nor excessively soft and flexible. This approach can eliminate unforeseen problems that may arise when trying to join perhaps dissimilar materials. You may consider sticking to more traditional materials for the bulk of you leaders and using the latest high-tech materials for the tippets.

In my next article we will look at designing leader tapers and the knots used to construct leaders.

> Read the second part of this article

Terry Lawton is a passionate nymph fisherman who caught his biggest wild brown trout (in the UK) - 4lb 2oz - on a home-tied variant of a goldhead, Sawyer-style pheasant tail nymph.