Quote Originally Posted by NJTroutbum View Post
I do 95% of my fishing with a 5'5" olive furled leader and 4-6' of 5-7x flourocarbon tippet. When fishing trico's and midges, I most often use the 7X flouro (Maxknot). I very rarely go larger than 5X for trout.

All my connections are loop/loop. I use a simple fishermans loop for my tippet loop. When I go larger than 5X on tippet I use a double fishermans loop.

Ralph
... brought to mind another issue that Tom touched on briefly in his article - fly size to tippet size ratio.

Here is a chart from Orvis with recommendations -

Tippet Size
Tippet Diameter
Approximate breaking strength in Super Strong nylon (pounds)
Balances with fly sizes:
8X .003" 1.75 22, 24, 26, 28
7X .004" 2.5 18, 20, 22, 24
6X .005" 3.5 16, 18, 20, 22
5X .006" 4.75 14, 16, 18
4X .007" 6 12, 14, 16
3X .008" 8.5 6, 8, 10
2X .009" 11.5 4, 6, 8
1X .010" 13.5 2, 4, 6
0X .011" 15.5 1/0, 2, 4
.012 .012" 18.5 5/0, 4/0,3/0, 2/0
.013 .013" 20 5/0, 4/0,3/0, 2/0
.015 .015" 25 5/0, 4/0,3/0, 2/0




According to Orvis, when I fish a large FEB salmonfly pattern, I should be using something like 0X or 1X tippet, and when I fish an FEB golden stone, I should be using 1X or 2X.

I fish both of them off a thread furled leader with about 4' of 4X tippet, which obviously means I'm unbalanced. ( That probably doesn't surprise a lot of you. )

Even with the smaller tippet for the larger flies, I'm pretty sure that a good number of the refusals of those flies are due to drag issues related to tippet effect. That begs the question, how much higher would the refusal rate be if I had a big ol' tapered mono leader with really big ol' tippet pushing and pulling the fly around ??

John

P.S. Since my typical drake, PMD, BWO, and caddis patterns are all within the fly size to tippet size ratio recommended by Orvis, I guess I'm balanced at least some of the time.