I tied two 5x leaders to Harvey’s formula. When I cast my flies, however, the leader hardly turned over and the flies landed close to the end of the line.
Maybe this good because there’s a lot of slack in the leader and this will eliminate micro-drag, but I’m concerned that I’ll end up with a lot of tangles in
my leader.
Should the Harvey leader turn over?
Thanks,
Randy
Yes, it should turnover. You should have “S” curves in the leader which will provide slack. But not the whole leader piled up at the end of the line.
The Harvey leader directions that I recall included tying a longer tippet, test casting, and then reducing the tippet length as needed to turnover with nice S curves. This, of course, depends on fly size / air resistance, line, casting style, etc.
I think one of the great benefits of tying your own leaders is that you learn more about leader design and can make adjustments to suite your style.
Thanks John. I’ll try a shorter tippet.
Randy
I read a piece by Mr. Harvey where he said he never used a tippet smaller than 4X. Hmmm. -Chuck
What size fly are you using? I use 5x for flies 16 and smaller.
The tippet may not be able to turn over a large or heavy dressed fly.
Size 18 and 20. Building these leaders is such a pain. I wonder if it’s really worth it.
Randy
The complicated leader formulas are unneccesary.
Build a Gary Borger Uni-body version of the George harvey leader.
For hand tied leaders, I use a very simple leader formula that I got from Gary Borger. You can google “Gary Borger Uni-body Leader” to read about it but the following directions will allow you to make your own. You must use Maxima Chameleon or Maxima Clear for this leader to work. DO NOT SUBSTITUTE maxima Green or any other monofilament line.
For the 4-6 wt rods that most of us use we need Maxima Chameleon (brown color) 0.020" (25 lb test) for the butt and 0.013 (12 lb test) for the transition. If you have 7 and 8 wt rods, buy some 0.024" (40 lb test) and 0.015" (15 lb test) Maxima Chameleon for the butt and transition respectively.
Each “base leader” without the tippet will have a butt section and a transition section made of the thicker and thinner Maxima Chameleon respectively. The transition section is ALWAYS 1 ft. long when finished. The transition section ends in a tippet ring and we will use a 3mm ring for the 4-6 wt rods. The tippet is added to the tippet ring. You can either tie the tippet to the ring or use a loop to loop connection.
The butt section length varies with the total leader length. I include a perfection loop on my butt section which I use to connect the leader to the fly line with a loop to loop connection.
For a 9 ft leader the butt is 5 feet long (including the perfection loop) and the transition is 1 ft. long for a base leader length of 6 feet. Then add a 3 ft long supple tippet section and you have a Uni-body George Harvey style leader. For longer leaders, lengthen the .020" Maxima Chameleon.
For nymphing, Gary uses the following formula. Butt section is 4 ft long and transition is 1 ft long for base of 4 feet. There are two tippet sections. The top tippet section is 4 feet long. The tippet diameter depends on the nymph size. Use 0X for size 2-8, 1X for size 10-14 and 2X for size 16 and smaller.
Tie a 2 mm tippet ring to the end of the upper tippet section and then tie a second 12" section of tippet to this tippet ring. For the diameter of this lower tippet section, divide the hook size by 3. So for a size 16 fly you would use 16/3 = 5X tippet. Place your spit shot above this tippet ring. You can also place a dropper with a second fly on this tippet ring if you want to use dropper rather than tying a second nymph in-line with the first.
You can convert from a nymphing to a George Harvey dry fly leader by changing the terminal tippet design between dry fly and nymphing set up. I keep the various nymphing section with the second tippet ring coiled and held with a bread wrapper wire tie in separate small zip lock bags. I do the same with the various dry fly tippet sections.
Each front end of the tippets have a perfection loops so I can swap them out with a loop to tippet ring connection. With this system I can quickly to go from a nymphing rig with the proper tippet size to a dry fly rig with the proper tippet size and back again.
http://www.garyborger.com/2012/05/09/uni-body-to-harvey-style-leader/
Thanks so much for the info on the Borger leaders. They look a lot easier to tie.
Randy
Silver Creek,
[SIZE=2]You stated, [b]“You must use Maxima Chameleon or Maxima Clear for this leader to work. DO NOT SUBSTITUTE maxima Green or any other monofilament line.”
I am curious as to why? Please understand, since you really stressed this in your post, you must have a reason and I am just curious why and nothing more. I only use furled leaders and do not intend to use anything else since I am happy with furled leaders and they fit my style of fishing. Just curious and nothing more…
[/b][/SIZE]
Curiosity is good.
The reason is that there are two primary factors that determine how well a butt portion of a leader can turn over the distal part of a leader. One is the mass and the other is stiffness. The greater the mass and the stiffer the butt, the more easily it will turn over the rest of the leader.
The diameter of the butt determines the mass. Maxima Chameleon is a STIFF monofilament so it transfer the momentum and energy of the cast more effectively that Maxima Green which is a limper monofilament. For the same reason, I nail knot a loop of Maxima Chameleon to the end of my fly line so I can connect my leaders to my fly line with a loop to loop connection. The Maxima Chameleon connector section transfers the energy of the cast efficiently to the leader without the “hinging” that would occur with a supple connector.
One of the reasons that hand tied leaders were popular many years ago was the entire leader had to be extruded using the same nylon material. So if you wanted a soft and supple tippet the butt section was also made of the same material and the cast would tend to collapse.
Now modern technology can form knotless leaders using a stiffer mono for the butt and a supple material for the tippet and knotted leaders are less common.
Silver Creek,
Thanks for the reply and the explanation and now I understand why you stressed using the material you did and appreciate your reply.
Silver- Thanks for all your input. Much appreciated. FYI- I have it on good authority the clear Maxima is identical to Chameleon, but is rather hard to find these days. Green is, as you say, more limp. Personally, I think Maxima gets short shrift among fly fishers. As long as you mike the material, and not believe the labeling, it’s darn good stuff. …Chuck
What about using Stren Easy Cast mono for butt leader material?
Randy
I make all of my nymphing leaders with Stren. I don’t know why you couldn’t use it for dry fly leaders. It’s all the same stuff packaged under different names.
I tend to agree with you lastchance. When I came across these “Uni-Body” leaders a while ago, by Gary Borger I did get some of the Maxiam Clear to try it out. Then I used Stern and the cheapy stuff like Zebco mono and I really didn’t notice any significance difference as far how the leader performed or breakage problems. Now granted I fish for bass and panfish here, no trout waters, so the leader construction may not need to be as critical as say setting up dry leaders for spooky trout. I usually throw streamers, leeches and top water poppers. Gary son Jason Borger has a nice article on leaders here http://fishfliesandwater.com/gear-rigging/some-leaders-for-trout/ with some excellent leader setups. I did contact him a while back to see what he used compared to his Dad’s Uni-Body leader. He said he’s used Orvis, Rio and Cortland leader material also with good success.
So I guess it comes down to personal preferences, where and what your fishing for, and other various conditions. But I’ve been using this Uni-Body leader basic construction for allot of leaders then varying the tippet(s) length and sizes. I use mainly 5 & 6wt WF lines & 8.5’ and 9.0’ rods.
Just my $0.02 cents worth 
Mike
Five feet of brown Cameleon and 3 feet of clear tippet . . . ? Don’t you feel the brown cameleon would put the fish off? And yes, I DO use it, but not that close to the fly. I use it because, to my senses, the cameleon is limper than regular clear Maxima, and George Harvey stressed a limpish, flexible leader. Other voices have said that the butt should approximate the tip of the line in flexibility. I think a .015 cameleon does that with a 5 wt fly line
Fish on!
Peter
There are two main characteristics you need to match to get a smooth transmission of energy and forward momentum down a leader. One is mass which is a component of both kinetic energy and momentum. The other is stiffness/flexibility. If a .015" piece of chameleon resists bending similar to then tip of a 5 wt fly line, it certainly is not close to the mass density of the fly line.
For a tubular shape tied to a tubular shape (fly line to leader butt) we can think of mass as linear mass density - the mass of identical lengths of material, fly line vs butt section of leader. Although the average mass per volume of the fly line is not identical to the average mass per volume of Maxima, for this example let us assume that they are. When we make that assumption, we can compare the relative mass density of the fly line tip to the leader butt by comparing the cross sectional radius of the fly tine tip to the leader butt.
The diameter of the tip of a 5 wt fly line should be about .022" and you said you wanted to match that to .015" Chameleon. The cross sectional area of a circle is π [FONT=arial]r[FONT=arial]2. So the ratio of the two areas is [/FONT]
[/FONT]
(11)(11)/(7.5)(7.5) = 121/56.25 = 2.15
What this means is that the fly line tip has 2.15 times the mass as the leader butt, and although you have matched the stiffness, you have not come close to matching the density. If the goal is a step down the linear mass at the junction of the fly line to a leader butt, you have down that. My opinion is that the leader butt should more closely match the diameter of the fly line tip so that the leader butt mass is more closely matched to the fly line. If a 50% step down in mass occurred, the forward velocity of the leader butt would have to double to maintain momentum.
I personally nail knot a short section of 25 lb. (.020") section of Maxima Chameleon to the end of my fly line with a perfection loop at the end and then connect the leader butt with a loop to loop connection. I think you will find that the commercial leaders have a butt section that is thicker than .015" because they are also designed to match the diameter of the fly line tip.
Silver,
Very interesting.
What are your thoughts about attaching a braided thread leader directly to the fly line?
For years I tied a 3-stage Maxima Chameleon tippet for most all of my nymphing, (18"-10#, 30" - 6#, Micro swivel to 36" - 2#). I still use Chameleon for my bass poppers. The stuff is tough.
“The diameter of the tip of a 5 wt fly line should be about .022”
Silver, maybe it’s because I haven’t bought a 5-wt. line in a few years, but I’ve never had one mic nearly that small. They all seem to be .030 or larger. So, I just adjust my leader butt diameter accordingly- and .020 seems to match the flexibility, and turns the leader over pretty well. .022 seems to hinge.
“I use it because, to my senses, the cameleon is limper than regular clear Maxima”
According to my contact with the distributor several years ago, Ultragreen is the limper mono, while Clear is identical to Chameleon w/o the dark dye.
Chuck