... for joining and advancing the discussion. I went back and looked at some old posts on furling, and ran across a thread you started about ten years ago on using different materials. That was in the heyday of participation on the Furling forum with all kinds of interesting input from a good variety of BB members.

Anyway, I learned furling from a fellow in Idaho Falls who used an old rope making machine to teach a class on furling. His method was / is quite different from Kathy's. I ended up designing my own furling jig based on his approach, which was rather a vexing process but was also quite rewarding in the end.

I did review Kathy's video a good number of years ago and found her method rather cumbersome, especially compared to the method I learned. Several other BB members use a method very similar to the one that I adopted, some of whom furl commercially. Kudus to Kathy for what she contributed to the general awareness of furled leaders and getting a lot of folks started, but also to others who brought alternatives to the discussion.

All that as background to saying it is difficult for me to understand some of the technique you describe in your post. Folks who do use Kathy's method will likely understand them quite readily.

What is apparent from your post here and in earlier discussions is that you have experience with a significant variety of materials, pursue many different species and fishing situations with a large arsenal of fly rods. Conversely, I only pursue trouts in freestone rivers in Montana and Idaho. Whereas you favor complexity, I favor simplicity. So I use the same basic thread furled leader that I first learned something like seventeen years ago. You favor floating leaders, for good reason, and I favor leaders that submerge for similar reasons. You have a lot more to contribute to a discussion of Tig's initial question about braided line for furled leaders that float, both helping Tig and others interested in different possibilities.

The question of floating leaders and tippets vs submerged leaders and tippets had quite an airing years ago on the BB. I won't get into that again here, but I did have a recent chuckle watching a YouTube video by a fellow who claimed to have just discovered the secret to catch more fishies fly angling with dry flies, in particular. He demonstrated the newly discovered secret with a couple underwater views showing a floating tippet and one showing a tippet submerged by adding something to help it break the surface tension and sink, both attached to a dry fly. The floating tippet caused some disruption to the surface of the water while the submerged tippet did not. He posited that the floating tippet disruption to the surface put fish off in a way that the submerged tippet did not.

Now, I don't buy the YouTuber's experiment because the conditions he presented don't come close to any real world angling situations other than on perfectly still stillwater. But based on my experience over the years, using very supple thread furled leaders with very supple tippet that submerge for dry flies, I do believe that a better presentation is possible with that set up than with a stiffer leader material and floating tippet.

Thanks again for jumping in here. And the trip down memory lane on the ten year old thread you started.

John