Custom Leaders - My next adventure

[Roadkill]

Easy to acquire cast keepers for your leaders come with a local beer and are easily replaced.

IMGP8989 by William Lovelace, on Flickr

[Bazzer69]

Easy to acquire cast keepers for your leaders come with a local beer and are easily replaced.

IMGP8989 by William Lovelace, on Flickr

Beer Mats!!! Haven’t seen one of those in a while. Hardy used to sell a nice plastic version of this leader storage card. I would love a few but haven’t been able to find one for many years.
Barry

[FliTrap]

REE, Howdy;

Got some old milk jugs??? You have a template ...

hank

Check out the plastic boxes from music CD's..... they will hold 2-3 of your leader discs (may need to adapt diameter?) Then there are different boxes and such to organize your boxes!

[ronr]

Bill when we get together later this month.. we need to work on a few of these cast keepers...I have plenty of beer coasters...

[Trevis]

great stuff - love the milk jug idea, Hankaye!!
In the late 19080's, I was on a custom leader kick - it is a lot of fun. Plus you can fabricate leaders for any purpose, and get your tippet to behave exactly how you want. Anymore, I just buy 9' tapered to 3X, and add my 5' of 3X with three loops on the end. It is fast, easy, and suits my fishing. Changing flies and the 5' looped tippet only takes seconds....


One other point - the absolute very best tippet material is Damyl Tectan Superior - NOT their fluorocarbon. It has the suppleness of the very early pinkish DaiRiki(pre oblong spools), color of Umpqua mono, and strength of ANDE Tournament monofilament.
I use .20mm 8.2# test for the looped tippet, and .18mm 6.6# test for the dropper flies. I snell all of my flies on 4 1/2" looped droppers. When Im out of DAMYL, I use Maxima green.

just my 2 cents FWIW

Hi, I wondering who sells this? Is it available in the USA?

[Mike62]

You know, I was perfectly happy with my meager knowledge of the various pitfalls of fly fishing paraphernalia before I landed here. Now, Dana has me eagerly seeking out antiquated and obscure hooks (boy, is that fun!) and here I've just been given yet one more spool of tippet material I have to try...

...I'm not bitching you understand, I just feel like I've been living on austerity rations my whole life and you guys dragged me into the buffet line at a Chinese restaurant.

[Theroe]

great stuff - love the milk jug idea, Hankaye!!
In the late 19080's, I was on a custom leader kick - it is a lot of fun. Plus you can fabricate leaders for any purpose, and get your tippet to behave exactly how you want. Anymore, I just buy 9' tapered to 3X, and add my 5' of 3X with three loops on the end. It is fast, easy, and suits my fishing. Changing flies and the 5' looped tippet only takes seconds....


One other point - the absolute very best tippet material is Damyl Tectan Superior - NOT their fluorocarbon. It has the suppleness of the very early pinkish DaiRiki(pre oblong spools), color of Umpqua mono, and strength of ANDE Tournament monofilament.
I use .20mm 8.2# test for the looped tippet, and .18mm 6.6# test for the dropper flies. I snell all of my flies on 4 1/2" looped droppers. When Im out of DAMYL, I use Maxima green.

just my 2 cents FWIW

Hi, I wondering who sells this? Is it available in the USA?

Fish USA sells it.....

[Trevis]

Thank you, I book marked them yesterday, but only found it in 5X and larger and then only in 300M spools- but their price plus shipping is about equal to that of a 25M spool imported. It would be a life supply of tippet for me. I was really more interested in the smaller sizes where I currently use FrogHair.

[raven4ns]

I made my own leaders for a while and they turned over better than the store bought ones. However, I got tired of tying the things and now I use furled leaders with 24" of tippet material. They work fine for me but others might find fault.... to each his own.

[Ron Eagle Elk]

Tim, Are your furled leaders thread or mono? I used furled mono leaders for quite a while. They turned over nicely, as a furled leader does. Then a friend made some thread furled leaders for me. They were superb as far as tiurning over a fly, but the loop for attaching the tippet failed on the first trip when I actually had a fish on. I'm back to store bought tapered leaders, tippet rings for droppers and tippet.