George Washington’s pocket fishing box

Nothing is more confusing than leaders and tippet. If you set out one morning to make fly fishing arcane, you couldn’t invent something better than tippet.  There’s the whole stupid system of nomenclature, 5x, 6x, 0x. Who calls something 0x? And then you get saltwater with a completely different poundage nomenclature and its own wacky world.  Wouldn’t it make sense that if you were going to catch a 200-pound fish, you’d need a 200-pound leader? But of course you don’t. You use a 20-pound class tippet attached to something called a bite tippet that’s 60 pounds and can’t be longer than 12 inches or some such to qualify. Or something. Unless of course you’re using wire because the thing has teeth.

The leader attaches to the end of the fly line (which is the part of the line that looks like the line in a weed whacker). You add tippet, which is just more leader really, to the end of the leader to make the leader last longer. The fly ties to the tippet. It’s the least obvious thing in the world.  When I bought my first fly rod at Gibson’s Discount Center circa 1970 I pulled off some monofilament from my spinning rod and tied it to the end of my fly line, probably with a square knot.  Nothing wrong with that, except of course it’s not right.  I’m just lucky it didn’t explode.

Since October I’ve lost four good fish on broken leaders or tippet: two nice trout, two bass, and a permit.  A permit.  The second permit I’d hooked and lost in two days. The first flipped off the hook, but it was the second that hurt. My permit.  The only good thing was that for the permit at least the guide thought the leader was cut, not snapped.

Back when I abandoned the square knot and tried to figure out leaders–trout leaders–I started tying my own progressive leaders. There’s a joke there about Democrats. I learned a lot of knots, I learned a lot about how leaders are built. I also learned that most guides hate knotted leaders, and at his first chance the guide would pull off my carefully built leader and replace it with the store-bought kind. I think they all figured my kind of magnificent casting must be blamed on something, and the knotted leaders were the first thing to hand.

Like fly lines, leaders were originally built from lengths of braided horsehair (called snoods). There are still guys out there who make horsehair lines and leaders.  Progress was made when somebody started making leaders out of the silk gland of silk worms, called silk gut. We’ve made a lot more progress, but I’m sorry we don’t still call stuff snoods.

Trotline with Snoods, from Wikipedia Commons

For bass and sunfish I use nylon leaders and tippet. At least theoretically nylon’s cheaper, bass and sunfish aren’t leader shy, and in a perfect world I need some nylon for trout dry flies, because nylon floats on the surface and fluorocarbon breaks the surface film.  The problem with nylon is that it rots faster than fluoro, and that $7 spool of tippet gets expensive fast when I have to replace it every year. The only way I can tell it’s rotten before I lose a fish is because it breaks easy barehanded. I lost both bass on 3X nylon tied to poppers. The 3X was rotten. It wasn’t that old, really, but I’m convinced the stuff doesn’t stay strong for more than a year, so now when I buy new leaders and tippet I mark the envelope or the spool with the month and year I bought it.

At least theoretically I mark the spool with the month and year I bought it.  Usually I look at the spool at the store and think I need to mark the spool with the month and year I bought it.

For nymphs and streamers I use fluorocarbon. It’s stronger for the same diameter and theoretically there’s less breakage from abrasion. It’s problem is that it sinks, but that’s not a problem for nymphs or streamers. I use fluoro for saltwater for the same reasons.  It may rot too, but slower than nylon. I lost both trout on 4X and 5X fluorocarbon leaders and tippet. One broke at the tippet ring, and the other at a knot.  I think the tippet was rotten, and the fish was well played, and the knot was well tied. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I don’t tie my own freshwater leaders any more. I buy 7.5’ 0X leaders for bass and 3X for sunfish and trout. From that base I can build whatever I need. The guys at the fly shop advised me to never fish bass with anything less than 12 lb tippet or leaders.  That’s about 0X, but I still use mostly 2X. It’s all simple really, and I don’t know why anyone would accuse fly fishing of being arcane.

I just wish instead of tippet I was buying snoods.