Make Your Own Fly Fishing Leaders

Growing up and fishing with fly rods (versus fly fishing), I knew the line had to "push" almost weightless flies rather than the fly having the ability to "pull" line off the reel as lures will in conventional fishing. So I knew to build leaders with heavy line at the fly line, tapering to fine line at the end. That's about it. Not much science or knowledge of the physics of motion did I use. I was truly a hillbilly fly fisherman. Short casts, in rivers and creeks averaging three feet deep and my leaders didn't have to be award winning. And they weren't. They were crude. No attention to mixing brands, stiffness and little attention to the weight of the lines I was tying together to create a taper-as long as they were "heavy...to light". I'll note too, that I didn't do much dry fly surface fishing. So "crude" was adequate.

Fast forward to recent years-when I decided to actually fly fish-I drilled down to the actual physics of equipment and terminal tackle. Add this complication, I had never used a fly rod on lakes. In one sense, lakes are easier than creeks and rivers because you're dealing with calm water or wind driven water. Not often (never, yet) have I had to read seams, under currents, swirls, rapids and pools on a lake. On the other hand, fishing sometimes as deep as 11 feet on a lake with a fly rod, boggled my mind. And this type fishing constitutes about 80% of my fly fishing lakes.

I began my "fly fishing lakes" journey by buying (way too many) manufactured tapered leaders. IMO (now) these leaders are designed for dry fly fishing, and since you're only averaging 3-4 feet deep on creeks and rivers, fishing nymphs and streamers you can get by with these same leaders. That never suddenly sink at a sharp rate like you need for I'll say three feet or more depths. Back to building my own leaders. But with a little more study and purpose than my hillbilly formulas.

Here's what disturbed me most about building leaders. I kept finding formulas like this one. Count how many knots that is! My hillbilly formulas were simple. Enough searching, and I found that it's accepted if not expected that building nymph and streamer leaders should be...simple. It's the dry fly leaders that need the taper engineered by a doctorate of engineering, to allow the dry fly to land with barely a ripple. But I dry fly it 20% of the time! Then the next blessing came along. A rather complex creature from Ohio made a bold statement. Complex because when he explains "fly fishing", there's always a whiteboard involved. And much of the time I'm of the opinion that he's overthinking it. So imagine my surprise when he "whiteboarded" a three section leader (not including the one section of tippet). Imagine my celebrating out loud when he added, "But if you're going to dry fly fish, buy the manufactured tapered leaders." (Instead of constructing the multi-knot, multi-headache leader formula just pictured.)

Lake fly fishing begs for a leader that will hinge, as pictured above. Enter the tippet ring. The piece of terminal tackle that I suppose may cause revocation of many pure fly fishermen credentials. And not one-but two-tippet rings! Unexpected bonus-the leader formulas I've used so far of which none are my own formulas, make my fly rod casts look like I've been lake fly fishing as long as I've been conventional fishing! Another bonus-minimal amount of sections...and the tippet rings...allow easy repair of "that section" of leader when you get it caught somewhere on your rotating fly reel, you "wind knot" it, or unprofessionally more like impatiently, jerk it loose from lake rip rap rock and nick the leader. Of course I've never done any of this-I just heard it happens. And of course, only the crude, rough dare I say hillbilly fly fisherman would do such a thing. (Oh wait...) Not a purest fly fisherman. (They actually just won't won't admit these shortcomings.)

Buy ya a stack of Maxima Ultra-green, some Rio fluorocarbon to use at the hinge to the end (because it naturally sinks better than mono) and build your own nymph (subsurface flies) leaders. Go ahead and add some stiffer Maxima clear for your leader butts if you wish, but just know that their clear has more memory than I had at any point in life. And I've always had a great memory! Still got some bucks left over that you don't want to spend on say...silly things like food...buy some Sunset Amnesia for your leader butts. As the name indicates, it has the (no) memory of a child home alone for a time, that let the dog out of the tub and run through the white furniture living room, shaking and shedding the muddy bath water all the way.

Learn a blood knot. Learn a triple surgeons knot. Buy some tippet rings. Build your own subsurface fly fishing leaders. You're welcome.