Line / leader color and tippet length

[JohnScott]

Chris Stewart started a thread on tippet length and line color on the Tenkara Forum which started an interesting discussion, but is probably more an FAOL Forum topic than a Tenkara Forum topic. Follow the link to Chris' thread.

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/bb/s...and-line-color

While finishing my second cup of coffee this morning, it occured to me that I had a bright orange thread furled leader rigged on one of my 4 wt reels. I got to thinking about Chris' thread and wondered what would happen if I fished a big old rubber legs off that leader with a very short tippet, say a foot or less, but with my 9' for 5 wt TFO BVK.

Checked the streamflows on a creek I know well. The big surge from a few days ago had settled down. Flows were high but stable. Likely the creek would be off color, but a good amount of water to fish.

Checked the weather forecast. Temps not bad. Not likely to be any precipitation. But the winds were forecast at 21 mph out of the South, which would mean casting upstream directly into a strong breeze. Not fun to start with, and not very appealing fishing a not so friendly casting combination of a heavy fly on a thread leader.

But ... what the heck. All in the name of science, right ??

Started about noon. The water was off color, maybe three to four feet of visibility, but the level was favorable, as expected. For the experiment, I would have prefered the normal clear water conditions, but clarity was good enough to give the fishies a good look at the bright orange leader close by the big stonefly nymph.

Things started pretty slowly, fishing the nymph off about 12" of tippet. Slow enough that I really wondered how things would turn out. But then I caught a fishy.



And then another. And another. Not so bad a place to fish after all, and at least the experiment was not doomed to failure, or was it.



After a while, and four fishies on the 12" tippet, I decided to cut back to about 6" of tippet, partly since I was going to be on some shallower water and partly because I wanted the bright orange leader to be really close to the fly, and then to about 4".



Over the next several hours, I fished another eight stretches of the creek with the 4" tippet set up, caught fishies in five of them, and ended up hooking over twenty fish and landing most of them. At this point, I'll just let the pixels tell the story.















I guess this doesn't really prove anything, except on one particular day on a particular creek over several stretches of water a bunch of fishies weren't at all bothered by having a rather bold orange furled leader only about 4" from the nymph them wanted to eat.

On the other hand, maybe it does mean something in more general terms. Think I'll have to do another experiment soon on a different creek.

John

P.S. The forecast breeze held off until after I finished. That made casting the big fly on a thread furled leader with a small thingamabobber manageable - not particularly fun, but manageable.

[DarrinG]

Interesting. One question I have is, how much fishing pressure does that water receive? And how much pressure over the winter? I think that could be a legitimate question as to how readily they would take the fly with the line/furled leader that close.
I fished a furled leader hard for about 1.5 years. I tried alot of them. I noticed that waters I fish that get pressured alot, my strike rates went down. Maybe it was just bad drifts, or bad presentations, or the wrong fly, or that I was just holding my mouth the wrong way, but when I switched back to my hand-tied tapered mono leaders (between 8 and 12 feet, depending on the water), my strike rate seemed to climb back up. I think the pressured fish, especially those in very clear water, were hesitant because of seeing the thickness of the furled leader so close to the fly. It was alot like "lining" a fish in some ways. Maybe I just have better confidence in my mono tapered leaders, but I do know that my strike rate climbed back up with them, and convinced me to stay away from furled leaders and stick with my hand-tied mono tapered leaders.

[appalachian angler]

I fish with the same style leaders as my friend Darrin. He is the one who got me into tying my own mono leaders. He typically uses a butt material that is a muted sort of green/olive. I use the same material, however I use the flourescent chartruese version. We have fished together and I have noticed no difference in the rate of catch with my "louder" colored leaders. I actually prefer the bright colored butt section as it serves as a strike indicator of sorts. It also helps my tired eyes maintain a sense of depth and location of my fly(s). I agree with Darrin when he says that he fishes better with what he has developed confidence in!

aa

[bluefish]

Broken surface, light/dark and backgrounds have something to do with visibility and putting down fish.One year, I tied leaders out of Maxima Chameleon , which was red. In dark waters it disappeared nicely, in clear water with the sun beating down it stuck out like a telephone pole. I switched to clear mono for the last sections. For me, the length of tippet also serves as a shock absorber to not break off bigger fish (longer tippet-better elongation) . I consistently will try to err on the side of caution. I agree with AA about leader butts not being as important. I do tend to follow the same train of thought as Darrin, though.



Charlie

[lastchance]

I pretty much fish (nymph) the way JohnScott does. I use a furled leader, courtesy of a buddy on FAOL here, made of Berkley Gold Vanish line, although it's not visible as gold underneath the water. To that I attach a piece of tippet about 3 feet long and add a dropper to that with another, oh, 15 to 18 inches of tippet. Last year I decided to use this method only to nymph so I could compare my catch rate to previous years when I used a mono leader and tippet. My catch rate was the same and it's so much easier to fish with a furled leader rig.

My only complaint is that I had to defend the furled leader to all those who said it was causing me to miss a lot of takes.

[JohnScott]

I pretty much fish (nymph) the way JohnScott does. I use a furled leader, courtesy of a buddy on FAOL here, made of Berkley Gold Vanish line, although it's not visible as gold underneath the water. To that I attach a piece of tippet about 3 feet long and add a dropper to that with another, oh, 15 to 18 inches of tippet. Last year I decided to use this method only to nymph so I could compare my catch rate to previous years when I used a mono leader and tippet. My catch rate was the same and it's so much easier to fish with a furled leader rig.

My only complaint is that I had to defend the furled leader to all those who said it was causing me to miss a lot of takes.

Bruce -

Just to be clear - I personally don't favor furled leaders for nymphing with large nymphs like I used in this experiment. Normally, I would just add 3' to 8' ( depending on current speed and depth ) of 2X tippet to the end of the fly line for this kind of fishing, with the indicator positioned about 4-6" up from the end of the fly line.

For small nymphs, I think furled leaders offer the same improved presentation that they do with dry flies, and this is another area where I think thread leaders excel because of the suppleness.

John

[JohnScott]

Interesting. One question I have is, how much fishing pressure does that water receive? And how much pressure over the winter? I think that could be a legitimate question as to how readily they would take the fly with the line/furled leader that close.....

... and the best I can say is that I've fished it about twenty times since 12-21-11 and have seen others on the same stretch of water only a couple times. It is rare that I see sign of others having fished on it on days that I didn't, that is, foot prints in the snow or mud.

Having said that, I doubt that pressure is much of a factor. I know this creek, I know where the fish are, I know what they like to eat and how to present it, and when it comes to confidence, I have a lot of confidence in my ability to find them and feed them. That's why I chose this creek for the experiment - which was not about nymphing with furled leaders, but about tippet length when using a brightly colored line / leader.

When you think about it, with only 4" of tippet, the fishies had to practically swim through the end of the bright orange leader to get to the nymph. If only one or two fishies did that in one or two places, it would be clear that the leader was off putting. But when over twenty fishies do that in six different places, it is clear that the presence of the leader doesn't deter them from going for the food item.

I'm not suggesting that one experiment on one day on one creek proves anything. But maybe it does indicate that a long held belief in long leaders and fine tippets isn't quite as important as most seem to want to make it.

Perhaps this discussion will encourage others to do similar experiments which will lead to something more definitive.

John