I recently bought a few furled leaders to try out. The other day I was using one and decided to try some nymphing. First, let me say, I’m not a very good nymph fisherman. In fact I’d say it’s the thing I am least proficient at. I need an indicator or bobber as some say. A few things came to mind while trying to do this with a furled leader.
The leader turns over the rig I was using nicely
I can’t use the smaller, slip on bobbers I like to use. I’m not a fan of the big yarn ones, because, well they just don’t seem to work for me.
It seems I needed more weight since there was more resistance on the leader than on a tapered leader.
Maybe I should stick with tapered leaders for nymphing.
So, those furled leader users out there. Do you use them to nymph? If you’re a bobber type like me, do you use a bobber or have you incorporated some type of color into your leader? Have you found the same with the resistance and extra weight thing, that I did?
I fish with my own furled leaders and I must say that I love them. Period. They take slightly more weight to get the fly down as quickly, but not really an appreciable amount since I usually give my flys a great long drift anyway. As far as the small slip on bobbers, I just use a thingamabobber (thats a tradename) and it works great. Its just what it sounds like and it works like using a small balloon. All in all, I have no complaints about furled leaders in any way except that when you get a “Crappy-cast-knot” they are somewhat obnoxious to find the right strands, but still easier to un-knot than a 6 or 7 x tapered leader.
I make and use my own furled leaders and will never use anything else. I make mine from Berkley Vanish Florocarbon in 4 pound test and they sink very fast and take my nymphs down very well. I do not use or like to use a strike indicator. I watch the end of my fly line like a hawk and it will let me know if I have a strike. The furled leaders I make and use are 7’ long and I attach a piece of 4 or 6 pound test florocarbon to it for tippet and it is usually 5 to 6 feet long. Another fisherman here that I know uses the same set up and he uses a strike indicator a lot and he just attaches it to the 5 to 6 foot long tippet material and not on the furled leader and has good results with it.
I used furled leaders all last year and am still not completely convinced. I did, however, like how they worked for unweighted or lightly weighted nymphs fished within a foot or two of the surface. I greased the leader carefully and did not use a drift indicator. Without the bobber, the rig was much nicer to cast and did not scatter shallow feeding trout. I used the end of the floating furled leader as my indicator and it worked fine. The furled leader made it very simple to adjust the length of the tippet and thereby how deep the nymph fished. Fishing one to three feet deep runs in spring creeks with fairly slow current this rig allowed me to catch a lot of fish that never would have tolerated an indicator. At the same time the end of the floating furled leader was much more sensitive to strikes than the end of the fly line.
Thanks all, for the replies. Maybe I just need to give it more time.
djo, that’s an idea I hadn’t thought of. I’ll have to give it a shot if I encounter that situation.
sisyphus, how do you attach the thingamabobber? It almost looks like you could use a bobber stop that would be used in spin fishing.
I just run a loop through the eyelet on the thingamabobber and loop it back over (Larkshead knot), but with a unithread leader it never slips and is still relatively easy to change the depth. I try to change up my depth when working deeper pools because I feel like the fish dont always hold the same feeding depths when they arent at the surface so I end up moving it all over the place. I tend to use about 36-48 inches of tippet (starting at 3 and moving to 4 or 5x) so I can fish anywhere from 2 feet beneath the surface with an indicator or 6 feet (the max depth I feel comfortable fishing with this particular setup).
When nymph fishing I seem to do a lot of adjusting. Trying to balance the depth, current, split shot, indicater, etc. I prefer a tapered mono or fluorocarbon leader for this. I just find it easier to tie the knots, there can be a lot of knots on a weighted dropper rig with multiple flies and an indicater.
For my dry fly fishing I use a furled leader of 6/0 UNI thread, greased as conditions require…with or without a dropper fly.