99% of my fishing is dry......often technical fish on 6x, sometimes 7x. I always have a mono leader for larger flies my 4x or 5x will be mono also.....but for anything sz 16 to sz 24 .....which really is the majority of my fishing my standard tippet is 6x Fluoro by RIO (though i'm dying to try trouthunter's 6.5x fluoro).......I never grease my leader but rather DEGREASE it using snake river mud by loon.....i don't want my tippet on top of the water but sunken if that makes sense.
I'm with Walter. Straight leaders that sink for drys. Floating leaders for nymphs.
Never grease your tippet.
A floating tippet shows in the surface tension like an arrow pointing to your fly.
You might as well hang a sign on it saying "I'm a fraud !".
Yes, yes, yes!!!
Whether to grease or degrease depends on how you are fishing (dry vs sunken fly) and the water surface type. Degreasing removes the sheen and helps the leader sink. So
if you are fishing over spooky fish in calm water, degreasing the leader makes the leader less visible.
When the leader floats, it displaces water and depresses the water surface. This tilts the water surface slightly and this tilt allows the impression of the leader to be seen even though it may be outside the window. It is seen as a difference in refraction of light through the tilted surface that is different than the rest of the flat calm water. If the leader is sunk, the leader can be seen directly but that is why fluorocarbon is used and the sheen removed.
Not only do the leaders depress the surface and the fish can see this surface depression, but this depression can be seen on the bottom of the stream especially in flat technical water.
The tilted meniscus refracts the light at an angle and just like a prism refracts light to form points of light, the leader causes points of light on the stream bottom.
If the water surface is choppy, it doesn't matter. Degreasing is not needed when fishing on the surface. Choppy water has constantly changing water surface angles and the leader impression is there but cannot be detected.
Then why grease a leader? I grease a leader when fishing the greased leader technique explained below.
Greased Leader Tactic
To catch a fish, you need to present the fly at the level that the fish is feeding. This is rule #1. If the fly is not at the level of the fish, everything else you do from a drag free drift and natural imitation does not matter.
The greased leader allows you to accurately place the fly at the exact level you want when the fish are feeding just under the film. Greasing the leader allows you to
choose how much of the leader sinks, and that allows it to choose the level of the fly.
The second rule is that if you cannot detect the strike, you will miss fish. The more sensitive the the detection is to a subtle strike, the more strikes and the faster you will detect them. The greased leader allows you to do that.
A greased leader is more detectable by the fish than a sunken leader BUT
rule 1 and 2 trump the fact that a less detectable leader cannot help you if you cannot put the fly to the fish at the level you need to catch the fish. So when the fish are feeding in the film or just under the film, and you need to place that fly at a perfect level, consider the greased leader. NOTE that I do NOT grease the leader all the way to the fly so the leader near the fly is SUNKEN.
This was a favored technique initially to fish small nymphs and pupa in and under the film. Now that emergers have been developed it is used to fish early stage emergers as well. If you saw a head and shoulders rise of a fish feeding just under the film, this was the technique that was used.
This was in the era before strike indicators and the dry dropper technique was developed. It is still one of the the best techniques, I believe, to detect strikes just under or in the film. The end of a floating leader is extremely sensitive to even the most subtle of takes.
It is also a great technique to fish to fish in shallow water near the bank using a sunken ant or a sunken spinner. There is no splash of a heavy fly or of an indicator. The cast is not affected by a bulky dry fly or an indicator. Accuracy with slack line casts and the drift is optimized, because there is just the fly and the leader. Even subtle strikes are detected because the leader is the indicator.
Sometime it helps to be an old fart that has seen and fished the old ways before indicators and the dry dropper.
Here are a few more ideas on when and how to use this technique:
Midge Fishing in Paradise | MidCurrent
"In the greased leader technique, the angler dresses the leader with a paste fly floatant (thick silicone pastes work best), down to within a few inches of the fly. This controls the depth of the fly’s drift, and the angler watches the point where the tippet passes through the surface film for indications of a strike. While this removes the bulk of an indicator from the leader—allowing better accuracy and a more subtle presentation of the fly—it also offers much less buoyancy and is much harder to see. This approach works best on very slow currents, and on lakes and ponds when there is minimal wind, as the greased leader will sink in faster or choppy water. It also works well when the light is low, as the greased leader shows up in flat light as a dark line on the surface film of the water. The greased leader technique is perhaps the best method for suspending a pupa pattern just under the surface. In stillwater situations, where the numbers of suspended pupae may be astronomical, a very slow draw of the fly may make it more visible to the fish, and make it easier for the angler to detect a subtle strike….
The greased leader approach and sight fishing are the best methods to imitate a midge pupa as it rises to the surface. The cast is made several feet above the fish, allowed to sink to the fish’s level, and then as the fly nears the fish, the angler stops the drift and uses a lift of the rod to move the fly toward the surface. If the fish are taking these ascending pupae, the upward movement will usually trigger a strike."
