Rigging
Do yourself a favor and cut off the loops that come on both your flyline and your leader. Tie a piece of Amnesia to your flyline using a Needle Nail Knot. Tie the other end of the Amnesia to a micro swivel with a 3-turn Clinch Knot. Whenever you want to change your leader just cut off the old one and tie the new one to the other side of the micro swivel with another 3-turn Clinch Knot. And then say goodbye to getting those huge Perfection Loops that come on you leader caught in your rod guides.
Everyone on the internet will tell you that they have the best leader formula. Here’s mine…
First, I like to rig up a versatile graphite rod so that I can adjust my approach quickly and easily from nymphing with an indicator, to nymphing with a sighter, to streamers or to dries the moment the conditions call for a change. Glass, bamboo or Euro Nymphing rods are specialty pieces of equipment meant for specific situations and therefore have only a limited place in my collection. This is because I’m not a “Dry Fly” angler or a “Streamer Junkie” or a “Euro Nympher” I’m a trout fisherman who likes catching as many trout as I can in various conditions all year long. For me, that means a powerful 10 foot long rod with flex closer to the tip but with as much flex in that tip as possible. My rod is paired with a weight forward floating 5 weight line. No need for a fancy reel, it just needs to function properly and balance the long rod. I prefer click and pawl reels for most trout situations.
With that said, the most important part of my entire system is the leader not the fly or the rod. My leaders are comprised of three main parts: a section of 25 lbs. Maxima Chameleon, a packaged tapered 9 foot 2x leader with a butt diameter of around .020-.025 inches and tippet. To assemble these parts I first cut off the welded loops that fly line manufacturers only include for anglers that don’t want to learn knots. Then I tie on a section of about 18 inches of the Maxima connected to the fly line with a needle nail knot. At the end of this section I attach the leader. I cut off the perfection loop that came tied on the leader from the factory and chuck it and attach the butt section of the leader to the Maxima. I then cut off up to 18 inches of the tippet section of that leader and chuck it too and attach a 1.5mm tippet ring. The other side of the tippet ring gets a section of level tippet.
For the most part, I will keep the leader section the same indefinitely. It could last an entire season. However, the Maxima and the tippet sections will change depending on the types of flies and technique I choose to use.
If I’m using a dry fly, the Maxima and my tippet will probably be about 18 inches each. If I’m also using a nymph dropper, I tie a single piece of tippet from the dry to the nymph that is at least 1.5 times the depth that I want the nymph to sink to.
If I’m only using nymphs, I add an additional 18-24 feet of Maxima that will be used in place of fly line. The fly line simply stays in the reel due to the length of the section of Maxima. Then I put a 6 foot piece of tippet onto my tippet ring and then to a nymph. Then I tie on another section of tippet of up to 18 inches from the first nymph to a second heavier nymph. I will either use an indicator attached to the tippet below the tippet ring and/or I will tie on one piece of hi-viz dacron backing using a uni knot with the tag left about an inch long above the tippet ring and use it as an adjustable sighter. However, if I know that all I’m going to do is nymph without an indicator, I will probably bring a 3 weight Euro specific rod with a Euro specific line and a micro thin leader.
I prefer a simple piece of Dacron backing to a monofilament sighter. They are adjustable, quick and easy to tie onto your leader, and may even be more visible. If you’ve ever left the tags long on your monofilament sighters, you’ll love how supple Dacron is and therefore virtually tangle free.
If I am using exclusively smaller or lighter nymphs I will drop-shot. I will drop-shot either under an indicator, with a sighter or even as a dry-dropper-shot. Each is rigged just as I have already described, but instead of a heavy fly at the end of my tippet, I attach heavy split-shot just above a double overhand stopper knot tied at the very end of the tippet.
If I’m casting streamers, I cut back the Maxima to it’s original 18 inches and attach as short a section of 2x tippet as possible to my tippet ring and attach my streamer to the end. However, I will usually switch to a dedicated 6, 7 or 8 weight streamer rod with a sink tip line and no longer than a 6 foot level leader if I know that all I’m going to do is cast streamers.
This style of rigging may sound complicated, but once you realize that really all I’m doing is adding Maxima and tippet when nymphing and subtracting them when fishing dries or streamers it becomes a much more versatile and simpler strategy. Especially, compared to carrying multiple rods and a whole wallet of various leaders or leader building materials. All the other variables are simply the types of knots I prefer and how I decide to use nylon or monofilament and in which diameter. Eezy peezy.
A couple final tips…
I prefer nylon materials for everything above the surface and fluorocarbon for subsurface.
Any Maxima I cut off is saved for later use. It can last quite a while.
I prefer a blood knot when connecting two pieces of line, a Davy knot when tying to a dry fly and a non-slip mono loop knot when tying to anything subsurface.
I never use loop to loop connections!
I don’t like flies tied to tags and I tie only to the eye of a hook and never the bend.
For dry flies, tippet diameter is matched only to the size of the dry fly and not to how difficult I think the fish are to catch. I believe trout in a river are rarely turned off by the visibility of tippet, rather they are turned off when a fly is not presented accurately. Using tippet that is too thin or too long will cast poorly and too thick or too short will drag. I prefer 6x for size 22 and smaller, 5x for size 18 and 22, 4x for sizes 14-18, 3x for sizes 10-14 and so on.
For nymphs, I use tippet no thicker than 5x to help reduce subsurface drag regardless of the size of the fly.
Before I start fishing I always use my hands to stretch and straighten the line.