Used a furled leader for the first time..got a question

[luked]

Sunday went fishin for a few hours and my old Mono leader was lookin pretty bad so i remembered i had a Furled one that i ad got from Joni a long time ago so i thought i would try it...it did seem to work really well was using a nymph under an indicator....the question i have is do you guys normally use a longer tippet material? or do you taper the tippet? like 12" of 4x-12" of 5x and so on or jsut use all one type but just a longer tippet.
reason i ask is i was using about a 24" piece of tippet and to get the depth i wanted i had to put the indicator on the leader itself and it didnt seem to work as well.
with this being my first time using one i wanted to ask you all and see what you thought.
i will say it turned over very well with a nymph rig on roll casting and false casting as well i was pretty impressed

 

[FlyBum]

Others would answer this better than I, but I have only used them with long tipit without tapering them. The few others I know that use them do the same. The furled leader is already tapered so I can't see how adding more taper would be beneficial. However having furled leaders in different lengths does make sense. Since thread based furled leaders transfer so much more energy you can tye on a longer tipit then when using mono or flouro leaders.

 

[RayMO]

Just tie the tipit on. I use a 5 1/2 foot furled leader that I tie myself (really not hard at all to do). Tie anywhere from 2 to 4 feet of tipit on the end. Four foot is begining to push it. I love them so much nicer to fish with and cheaper...

 

[cattech89]

I agree with Flybum.
I don't taper my tippets either. I've never seen the need to do so and I use furled leaders almost exclusively. Perhaps with some super teeny tiny dry flies you might but under "normal" circumstances I would say its not necessary.
I also typically use about 20"-24" of tippet material.
Glad to see you've joined the furled fan club.

 

[madjoni]

with this being my first time using one i wanted to ask you all and see what you thought.
i will say it turned over very well with a nymph rig on roll casting and false casting as well i was pretty impressed

Yes,they turn over really good but I dont use furled leaders for nymphing
just for dry flies and I use around two ft tippet.....

 

[silver creek]

I wouldn't think a furled leader to be the best for nymphing. A nymphing leader should be of single strand for maximum sink rate, of low visibility under water, and be non-stretch for more optimum strike detection and hook set.

Furled leaders being multifilament, they hold air between the filaments. If you grease them to remove the air, you are adding floatant. They are thicker and the individual fibers have more water resistance than a single smooth surface. Hence they have a slow sink rate compared either mono or flurocarbon.

Because they are multifilament, they are more opaque and visible than either mono or flurocarbon.

Because they are furled they will stretch. The stretch delays both strike detection and reaction. They are the wrong tool for nymphing. So they are not what I would use for strike indicator or straight line nymphing. You could use them for sight nymphing depending on the depth of the fish or if the strike indicator is placed beyond the furled section. That would require a very long tippet where I normally nymph.

Since the strike indicator should be about 1.5 to 2.0 times the depth of the water, a three foot tippet or even a 4 foot tippet on a furled leader is just too short to put the indicator other than on the furled section of a furled leader.

 

[luked]

yea most of the fishing i do is nymphs...about 98% of it is nymphing.
so what would be something that would be better than the 5x Rio leader to use then?
the Rio leaders i have been using are great but the thingamabobber i use for my indicators are really trashing my leaders...i tried some of the fish pimp strike indicators a few weeks ago and couldnt keep them on as well...in 1 day i lost 2 just from them comming off so i need to figure out somethin better

 

[Joni]

No taper for me. I slap on 3' to 5' of P-Line 6 lb fluorocarbon. And lately I am adding 15' of fluoro and drilling the hole in my slip indicators to slide over ring and leader. Why you ask, because with even a 5' furled leader and 15' of mono, the furled actually makes semi casting possible. Not pretty, but something I could NOT do deep nymphing with straight fluoro.


Silver Creek, I agree with you totally, but I take a thread leader and scrunch it in my hand under water making the thread absorb water and in doing this, it becomes a great sink leader. I have also added Kevlar to help sink. This is with the THREAD leaders, the mono, I will rub them in mud to help them sink.

 

[dhaynes]

I use a joni furled leader with a shorb loop.. I added about a 4" piece of 3x with a tippet ring to which a tie a 2 to 3 foot piece of 5x. When I use tiny flies I tie them on 2 feet of 6x or 7x at home where I can and use a magnifier... On stream I surgeon's knot this to the 5x creating a tapered tippet.. It seems to work fine -- fly lays out well -- and it solves my eyesight and less-than-nimble fingers problem....bigger flies can go right onto the 5x.

 

[fishnskiguy]

I don't know why, but I always tie on about 16" of 3X tippet to the furled leader, then 16" of 4X or 5X depending on water clarity.

Contrary to what was said above, furled leaders work great for nymphing. I make my own from 6/0 uni thread, and trust me, they DO NOT stretch one bit, in fact much less than a tapered mono leader.

Furled leaders hold a thingamabobber with no slipage much better than a mono leader, and at the end of the day when the thingamabobber is removed, the leader has zero memory. A mono leader will have a kink that will be there for half of forever.

Chris

 

[silver creek]

yea most of the fishing i do is nymphs...about 98% of it is nymphing.
so what would be something that would be better than the 5x Rio leader to use then?
the Rio leaders i have been using are great but the thingamabobber i use for my indicators are really trashing my leaders...i tried some of the fish pimp strike indicators a few weeks ago and couldnt keep them on as well...in 1 day i lost 2 just from them comming off so i need to figure out somethin better

There have been several posts about how Thingamabobbers deform the leaders. There is a way to attach thingamobobbers that doesn't "trash" the leader and makes the thingamabobber easier to move along the leader. Here are instructions for how it is done.

You Prusik knot a rubber band to the leader. Then you girth hitch the Thinggamabobber to the other end of the rubber band. Put the end of the rubber band through the Thingamabobber slot and over the bobber to make the girth hitch.

The Prusik knot will keep the Thingamabobber in place and yet can be moved along the leader when you want. It doesn't ruin the leader as other systems but the thingamabobber will flop a bit. It works best on the smaller bobbers of course and you need to get the right sized rubber bands.

 

[littledavid123]

I typically fish a 5 1/2 foot thread furled leader with 7 feet of 5x tippet and using a thing a ma bobber have no problems turning the tippet over. The thread furled leader has 0 stretch as compared to a tapered mono tippet.

I fish twice a week and have used the same thing a bobber for 2 months, normally in the course of a days fishing with a 2 drop system I will tangle about 3 times and I am mostly fishing out of a kayak. Sounds like your loops may be to tight.

There is zero memory in the leader and in my opinion the fish pay less attention to the olive colored leader as opposed to the mono leader, it may be the light reflecting off the mono leader sitting on the surface that spooks them. It also picks up and lays down on the water quieter.

Dave