Leaders

[Buddy Sanders]

Garb,

For most fly fishing, leaders and tippets are different things.

You can buy ready made 'tapered' LEADERS...they come in various sizes and lengths. You can make your own tapered leaders by tying together different diameters of leader materials. Some folks like the ability to customize lengths and diameters in their own designs...others like the ease of premade leaders..both will catch fish just fine.

TIPPET is the section of line that ties to the fly itself. Most premade LEADERS taper down to a specific tippet diameter, and lots of fishermen just tie their fly to that. But this means that every time you change flies, you are losing a little bit of your LEADER, and depending on how often you change flies, you'll sooner or later end up in an area of the LEADER that is thicker than you desire. To prevent this from happening, most of us tie a piece of TIPPET MATERIAL to the end of the LEADER.

This piece of TIPPET can be as long or short as you want, most folks use a couple of feet of it. This lets you tie on the flies using up only part of the straight level tippet material, and not a part of the expensive tapered leader. When the tippet gets too short, you just tie on a new piece.

Doing this can allow a new LEADER to last for several seasons if you want it to.

Now, to your original question:

Making your own hand tied leaders lets you determine things like taper, length, overall and specific strengths, etc.. If you want a really heavy leader for fishing large bass bugs in heavy cover, you can tie one up that tapers from 180-120-80-60-40 (can't buy that kind of thing). If you want a leader for fishing chronomid patterns deep in a lakle, you can tie up a stiff butt short tapered leader to turn over the strike indicator, and add a 20 foot piece of flourocarbon tippet to it...things like that.

Premade tapered leaders are smooth with no knots in them except where the tippet attaches...they won't catch on bits of debris and weeds, etc., they turn over well, and work just fine for most fly fishing...plus, they are easy to get and use...not time spent tying all those knots.

All in all, though, absent some odd specific requirements, it's really just a matter of personal choice. There are some very accomplished fly fishermen out there who don't bother with any kind of tapered leader at all. They just use a properly sized level piece of monofilament line.

Kind of up to you.

Buddy