Tips and Tricks- Bonefish/Permit Leaders

It's getting to be the time of year when people are getting ready to go on their saltwater trips. 

Here's a couple suggestions for your leaders for 

Bonefish and Permit:

- Most of the leader manufacturers offer fluorocarbon saltwater leaders, for  Bonefish and Permit. You're best to stay away from the fluorocarbon leader. Why? Because one of the properties of fluoro is it's higher density. A fluorocarbon leader will sink horizontally, leading to the fly keeling on the bottom instead of "hopping" off the bottom on each strip. This will lead to numerous bottom and grass hookups, and snags, as well as a ton of spooked fish.

- Use a monofilament saltwater leader and replace the tippet (front 20-24") with fluorocarbon. This will fish the fly properly and give you the abrasion resistance at the tippet that you need.

The above drawing shows (top) how a mono leader/fluoro tippet will fish on the flat. The fly will pop off the bottom on strips. The bottom drawing shows how a full fluoro leader will sink. As the leader is horizontal on the bottom, the fly will drag, leading to spooked fish and snagged flies.

- Why should I use a saltwater leader? Why not freshwater stuff? The answer is simple, saltwater leaders have longer, stiffer butt sections and they are way easier to turn over in a flats environment.

- Should I make my own leaders? Certainly, most of us here at the shop build our own leaders for Bonefish and Permit. As long as you use clear, stiff, monos like Ande. If you're keen on building your own leaders, we have bulk spools of Ande Monofilament here at the shop and we can show you the proper tapers for either Bonefish or Permit.

 

- What length of leader should I use? For Bonefish, 10-12 foot leaders will cover pretty much anything you might encounter Bonefishing. To make things simple, we recommend the 10 foot, 12 pound Bonefish leaders. As they are mono leaders, you just add about 20-24" of fluorocarbon tippet on the end and you have a perfect Bonefish leader.

For Permit, accuracy is paramount. This is why we always recommend to people heading off to go Permit fishing that they use nothing longer than 10 foot leaders. Anything longer and the denser, heavier Permit flies can be a real challenge to turn over. Nothing more frustrating than a 12 foot leader that you can't turn over on a 60 foot cast to the Permit shot of your dreams. 10 foot!
In our opinion, the best setup for Permit is a 10 foot, 16 pound saltwater leader (mono). Cut the front 24" off the leader and replace with 16 pound Flourocarbon. (12 or 14 pound tippet may be required in certain locations and situations).
 
- What knot should I use for tying leaders? Tippets? We always tell people to use the knot they are comfortable tying and have confidence in. Having said that, we tie all of our own leaders, from butt to tippet, with Blood Knots. Even the tricky mono to fluoro connection. Your blood knots should have at least five wraps each way on the blood knot for mono to mono. We do 5 wraps on the mono side and 6 wraps on the fluoro side for mono to fluoro connections.

Understanding Tippet Diameters

Been meaning to do this short explanation for a while. It's very common for customers to come into the shop and purchase 5X and 6X tippet like crazy. If it's appropriate, we will often ask where they are using these fine tippets and almost always the answer is "for regular stuff" size 6-16 flies, dries and nymphs. These same customers often complain of losing quite a number of flies during the course of fishing.

Perhaps these few points of information might be helpful (most of you will know this stuff but there are tons who don't, so bear with us).

- Leaders are designated by length, mainly 7.5', 9', and 12' and then by the diameter of the tippet. This is about the last 2' on a 9' leader.

- Tippets are also available on spools, primarily so an angler can tie on replacement tippet as it's used up so as not to cut the leader back in to the larger taper which will result in the leader not performing properly.

- Tippet diameters are based on a standardized "X" system, available in 0X to 8X. The larger the number, the smaller the diameter. You don't have to know that 4X is .007" diameter or 2X is .009" diameter. You just have to know what we refer to as the rule of 4. For proper knot strength/integrity, you divide the fly size by 4. This gives you the optimum tippet diameter for that fly. The reason for this is that, just like tippet, the wire diameter decreases on a hook as the size gets smaller.
The best knot is going to be one where the tippet diameter and hook wire size are almost identical in size. If the hook wire size is much larger than the tippet diameter, the knot will likely fail.
For instance, using 6X with a size 10 Green Drake....great for fly sales because you will lose a bunch.

Some examples, if you are using a size 12 fly, the perfect tippet diameter is 3X. If you are using a size 6 Stonefly nymph, you can use either 1X or 2X.

For those buying up all the 6X out there, it is actually appropriate for flies in the size 22-26 range. Are you actually fishing flies this small? Likely not.

For most of us in this part of the world, we're mostly fishing flies in the size 2-20 range, with 12-16 being the most common.

You can simplify your life a bunch. For leaders, if you have some 
9' 0X, 9' 3X leaders, and then some 0X, 2X, 3X, 4X, and 5X tippet you can do most anything around here.

The 9' 0X leaders will work just perfect for big streamers like you would use for Bull Trout. If you tag on a short piece of 2X this leader will then work for all your Stonefly nymphs, Stonefly dries, and Hopper patterns.

The 9" 3X leaders work great for a lot of the stuff we fish around here, sizes 10-14. And then, say you're fishing size 16 Caddis, you can add a short piece of 4X and you're set.
That same leader, with a little 5X added, will work just fine for Tricos and small BWO's.

Makes things easy and simple...and will likely lead to less flies bust off.

 

Bonus For The Flyfishers Out There!

Every once in a while we get a nice surprise.

There are several items in the shop that have dropped in price for 2010!!

Simms, Sage, Orvis, have dropped retails on a lot of items.

All leaders and tippets are at a new low price as well!