Who's using knotted tapered leaders?

[jkurtz7]

I've been experimenting with many types of leaders for a number of years now.
For the longest time I've tied up my own knotted tapered leaders, but I'm not all that happy with the formula's I have. I've tried a few different furled leaders and Singapore twist leaders as well and I'm still not all that happy with those either. Do any of you have some knotted leader formulas that turn over really well that you use for panfishing?

J.

[dudley]

I've tied my own leaders for years
I'm not sure what kinda flies your talking about but a leader with a heavy butt and a short midsection will turn over best
For large saltwater flies and bulky, air resistant bass bugs I like a leader that's 70% butt, 10% mid, and 20% tippet
Smaller flies don't need anything that extreme. Something more like 60, 20, 20 is fine
Your typical trout leader is more like 50%, 25%, 25%.

[dudley]

I probably should add that you should never step-down more than .003" at a time. .002" is best.

So the lighter the tippet, the more graduations you need.

Then there's the line power transference
A 6wt line will need more graduations than a 3wt line, because the power of the thicker line needs to step down more sizes than the thinner line,
? Does that make sense?

So
A 9' leader for an 8wt or better line, that ends in a tippet of 16#- 20# test would only need three sections.
A 9' leader for a 6wt line that ends in a tippet of 5x is going to need 8 or 9 graduations
A 9' leader for a 3wt line that ends in a tippet of 5x is going to need 7-8 graduations

Okay
Now ya got 3-4 fairly long graduations in the butt. Each one slightly shorter that the one before it
Then another 4 or 5 short graduations for the mid.
Then your 20" tippet

Let's put together the 60%,20%,20%, 9', 5x for a mid weight rod (5,6,7)

30" -.021
18" -.019
12" -.017
5" - .015
5" - .013
5" - .011
5" - .009
20" -.006

That's ideal
Probably more trouble than I would go through for pan fish.
You can skip a graduation or two (or three) along the line, as long as you don't step down more than. .003" at a time




Then again.... sometimes I just use straight mono

[Uncle Jesse]

I am guilty of using a little of whatever I have around, but a friend gave me an old "leader making kit" from Stren. There were small spools of line from 30# to 2# in it, all fit in a nice plastic tube. I don't think it was your typical spinning line Stren however, it had a little more stiffness to it. Makes good leaders too. I have alway saved line that was not really good for spinning rods or even casting rods to make leader. But I am a long ways from being expert in this area.

[ducksterman]

I have alway saved line that was not really good for spinning rods or even casting rods to make leader.

UJ....I'm curious...what were the qualities that made the line not really good?

[RG/AR]

For bluegill, I find it hard to beat 6' of 6 lb. test, for bass the same length of 8 or 10 lb. test seems to work well for me.

[sirhoops23@yahoo.com]

I have found some good leader calculators online. a couple of them are downloadable. here is a site that you could check out http://www.jdunns.com/personal/java_leader_calc.html

[techno2000]

For bluegill, I find it hard to beat 6' of 6 lb. test, for bass the same length of 8 or 10 lb. test seems to work well for me.

Yep, that's all I use for Bluegill, about 4 feet of 6 pound test mono.

[BobC]

Try globalflyfisher.com. There is an excellent leader program there (Leadercalc) created with Excel that will keep you in leader experiments for hours! It is a great program.

[freshwaterpirate]

I've been experimenting with many types of leaders for a number of years now.
For the longest time I've tied up my own knotted tapered leaders, but I'm not all that happy with the formula's I have. I've tried a few different furled leaders and Singapore twist leaders as well and I'm still not all that happy with those either. Do any of you have some knotted leader formulas that turn over really well that you use for panfishing?

J.

i'm using 45/35/30 leader formula for my lighter flies such as dries and nymphs with some really soft and supple mono that i sometimes use on my spinning reels. we dont have panfish here but its what i use most of the time. otherwise, i use a twisted butt section of 8 or 10lbs mono and attach a tippet of about 6lbs or 8lbs and that comes up to a total length of about 8 feet.