Fluorocarbon Leader "Memory" Issues

[Kai]

I bought my first fluorocarbon leader not too long ago. Water levels around here are dropping, creeks are getting more shallow, fish are more easily spooked, and I figured that making my leader less visible would be a good thing.

The only problem is that the "memory" of this leader is very strong. Even after a fair amount of working the leader with rubbing and pulling to straighten it out, it still keeps its coiled shape.

Fishing with it is like fishing with a Slinky on the end of my fly line.

Mine is a Redington Lucent Fluorocarbon leader (9 foot 5x).

Is this "memory" a characteristic of all fluorocarbon leaders? Are other brands better in this respect?

If not, I'm going back to my tried and true regular leaders.

[Buddy Sanders]

Kai,

Flourocarbon leaders ar more prone to memory and harder to straighten.

In any event, why not just use flouro tippet on a regular mono leader? Solves both problems.

Good luck!

Buddy

[rrhyne56]

Furling a leader can do away with a lot of the memory issues I have found.

[pspaint]

I use fluro leaders and tippets all the time. Some of the leaders have worked very well, others, not so much. I've had pretty good success with Dai Rikki, Orvis (although the Orivs tends to nick up easier) , Seguar and Rio.
Buddy Sanders made a good point about running a nylon/mono leader and then running a fluro tippet section. I do that a lot on the trout streams and it's worked just as well as the fluro leaders. I usually run around 18" off the mono leader. That seems to give enough of a "buffer", so the fish don't see the leader.

[Apachetrout]

Kai:
Hello. I make the butt and taper section of my leaders out of either chameleon or ultragreen Maxima leader material and use fluorocarbon for the tippet. I like the Airflo sightfree G3 fluorocarbon or the Rio fluoroflex plus. I have been using this system for several years with good results.

Lanny

[Harebear]

I know a good 'ol piece of rubbery inner tube does great for straightening leaders, but I'm not sure about the fluorocarbons though. They're designed not to stretch as much right? Is that what makes them hard to straighten?

[Dr. Fish]

Fluoro does tend to have more memory however a good quality fluoro leader should straighten out nicely by simply stretching it a bit. I use Seaguar Grand Max fluoro and if you give it a pull to stretch it it stays nice and straight.

[Kai]

Kai,

Flourocarbon leaders ar more prone to memory and harder to straighten.

In any event, why not just use flouro tippet on a regular mono leader? Solves both problems.

Good luck!

Buddy

After fishing for about an hour today with my slinky leader, I took your advice and just tied on a fluoro tippet. Works much better. I've got 4 more of these fluoro leaders that I think are just going to go to waste, as I can't stand to use them.

I tried this odd Seaguar knot to tie the tippet to the leader.
http://seaguar.com/Knots_SEA.html
Seemed to work ok.

[Dr. Fish]

I use a standard blood knot for the most part when joining leader material. Just be sure you lubricate the knot completely before snugging it down and you should have no trouble at all.

To me, the ideal leader is tying the first 2 butt sections with Frog Hair Fluoro and they remaining sections with Seaguar Grand Max. The Frog Hair acts as your shock absorber, protecting your lighter tippet. I have no doubt that this combo has helped me land some fish that simply should have broken off (hanging up around blowdowns, around rocks, jumping and landing on line, etc).

[Fly Goddess]

Buy flourocarbon leaders can be very costy, when as mentioned either furled or regular mono taper with flouro tippet on the end. I use a surgeons knot to connect. Flouro has come a long way baby