Fluorocarbon, Tapered Leaders & Polyleaders in Modern Salmon Fly Fishing
Introduction
This article is not designed to intentionally convince anyone to switch from monofilament to fluorocarbon but to give those who have decided to try fluorocarbon the best chance of benefiting from its use.
Fluorocarbons were first developed in industry in 1930, though it wasn’t till the mid sixties when two men, one who was an avid angler, working as a chemical enginneer in a prominent Japanese company realised the possibilities of fluorocarbon as a fishing line.
The extrusion process was initially found to very difficult and it wasn’t until 1972 that the first fluorocarbon line was launched, and the rest as they say is history.
Fluorocarbon offers many advantages to the Salmon Angler over nylon for certain applications, i.e subsurface presentations provided that certain guidelines are followed.
Facts
Fluorocarbon’s hard surface gives substantially more abraision resistance than nylon, I think this is one of the main advantages to fluorocarbon in a fishing application.
Sinks up to 4 times faster than nylon with a sink rate of 1.5 – 2 inches second, for those who are interested water has a specific density of 1.0, monofilament at 1.1 and fluorocarbon owing it’s faster sink rate to a density of 1.78. However be aware that the lighter breaking strains will not break the surface tension under their own mass.
Fluorocarbon absorbs very little water, only .05% of it’s own weight. This means that it will not swell and increase in diameter therfore giving a decrease in breaking strain.
Now here’s the interesting bit, along as the same diameters are used fluorocarbon will have a much higher breaking strength when wet than nylon due to nylons water absorbtion giving a reduction in breaking strain.
Knots & Practical Applications
First of all forget all about breaking strains when it comes to selecting a fluorocarbon, instead we need to be thinking about diameters. This is particularly true if an angler is making the change from monofilament to fluorocarbon.
Many anglers will choose the same breaking strain fluorocarbon as they would monofilment and this is a mistake.
This leads to the use of a fluorocarbon with a much narrower diameter than the monofilament of the same breaking strain. The narrower diameter will not be sufficient to transfer enough energy to turn over the fly cleanly which in turn will cause hinging and a weakening in the leader. This is one of the causes of those unexplained crackoffs and breakages.
This issue can also be exasperated by some common issues when casting be it overhead or Spey, poor anchors, too much acceleration too soon in the forward stroke, not allowing an overhead backcast to fully unroll prior to starting the forward cast. Any fault that causes a blown or skipping anchor will certainly lead to weakness and unexplained breakages. A frayed leader is a sure sign of this fault.
In this respect mono tends to be more forgiving due to it’s stretch and suppleness, however in doing so we are compensating for a fault that lies with us rather than correcting the cause of the problem.
E.g If you normally use 15lbs mono (0.38m then you need to be using 23.5lbs Fluorocarbon (0.37mm) however if you select the equivalent 15lbs flouro (0.28mm) then you’ll end up with the same diameter as 10lbs mono and will not be fit for purpose.
If you follow this you’ll end up fishing a higher breaking strain than with mono and benefit from greater abraision resitance with some of the better fluorocarbons on the market.
Personally I would recommend and use 0.33 – 0.40mm (19 – 25lbs) for flies tied on hooks from size 12 – 4 and 0.40 – 0.52mm (25 – 44lbs) for tube flies depending on the type, size and weight.
For very light line fishing in very low water conditions and flies smaller than size 12 I would use 0.28mm (15lbs) fluorocarbon.
Don’t forget that with the use of loop knots, small flies can be fished on higher diameter tippets and yet still retain great mobility. I don’t find Salmon to be leader shy only angler shy and think you should always use the highest diameter you can get away with while allowing the fly to swim as required. You never know when that fish of a life time may decide to take an interest in your fly.
This brings us to the subject of knots, which can be frustrating for anglers when first using fluorocarbon.
I am not going to go into too great a detail on this other than to say that most of the knots that work well with monofilament will work fine with fluorocarbon so long as they are tied correctly and with attention to detail – don’t rush.
One tip I have found to help is that with many of the knots a couple of turns less seems to work better when using fluorocarbon and ensure you moisten the knots well prior to tightening.
e.g I will use a maximum of three turns with knots such as half blood knot and I’ll always employ the tucked version.
Always test your knots with sufficient force to show any weakness.
Here are some photos of the knots that I use and work very well with flurocarbon;
Fluorocarbon has two applications in flyfishing for the Salmon angler;
Tippet Material, for use as the tippet when using a polyleader or tapered leader.
A loop to loop connection between the polyleader and the tippet works great though some do prefer to use a tippet ring.
Bear in mind that most polyleaders will have a breaking strain of approx 25lbs and are of a monofilament core, so be sure to select a fluorocarbon diameter that equates to a breaking strain of less than that of the polyleader. Polyleaders with a stronger breaking strain can be purchased and I would recommend these if you find yourself having to use higher diameter tippets demanded by certain conditions.
Polyleaders range in density from floating down to sink 7 and come in varying lengths from 5 – 15 feet depending on the manufacturer. The tippet length should be choosen to suit the density of the polyleader in use.
You may want to use anything up to 10 feet on a floater or intermediate polyleader depending on requirements and flysize, and then scaling right back to 2 - 3 feet for a sink 7 poly leader to ensure the fly is taken quickly down to the correct fishing depth. I have even seen anglers attach the fly mistakenly directly to the short length of mono core on the polyleader and still catch fish.
There is no point fishing a fast sinking poly leader to gain depth and having the fly wafting around a few feet above it on a long tippet.
Tapered Leaders, either a manufactured knotless leaders or a homemade leader made from several lengths of varying diameters.
Manufactured Knotless Tapered Fluorocarbon leaders come in varying lengths generally from 9 – 15ft and can used in various situations.
Long tapered leaders fished on floating lines from longbelly to shooting heads with small flies in summer conditions can be a great way to fish. The fly can be attached directly to tapered leader or to a tippet attached to the tapered leader via a loop to loop connection or a blood knot. These leaders can be anything up to 20 + feet in length and are a great way to present a fly in a stealthy fashion to spooky fish in low water. These long leaders will also get the fly down quite a bit, anything up to 12 inches in fast water depending on the style of fly used. They also make for great anchors when speycasting, with good technique they make little or no disturbance as the long length means you need not place any flyline on the water.
Homemade Tapered Fluorocarbon Leaders in my opinion really allow us to fine tune our leaders to suit the prevailing conditions.
A lot of the manufactured tapered leaders will have a butt section that is really too short and unsuited to transfering enough energy from the flyline to the fly particularly with larger flies.
The longer butt section will also help provide grip when anchoring a speycast.
The simple rule I use when making tapered leaders for general fishing is a ratio of 60 – 20 – 20 percent .
60% butt section – 20% mid section – 20% tip section
However when fishing fast sinking shooting heads with short leaders and very big flies I’ll normaly make the leader out of only two sections with a ratio of 60% butt section - 40% tip section.
E.g when fishing a S3/S5/S7 in very fast water with a large tube fly I’ll use a leader comprising of 70cm of 0.62(52lbs) with 40cm of 0.47(35lbs).
When Summer fishing with floating lines small flies and very long leaders the ratio can swing the other way with a 50% butt section – 25% mid section – 25% tip section.
Bear in mind that prevailing conditions may also require a change to the ratio e.g casting into a strong head wind can benefit from a longer butt section a shorter mid and tip sections, this of course will only help if your casting technique is correct for such conditions.
I have been using fluorocarbon for the past fifteen years without any issues and it does provide many advantages. Unfortunately like many things in life you get what you pay for so I would strongly advise staying away from the cheap stuff.
This is simply down to the quality control measures and extrusion process used by the more prominent manufacturers when making premium brands. Quality standards will be higher with more stringent specifications. Any manufacturer runs the risk of a bad batch for many reasons but there is less chance of these batches getting to the angler when the correct quality measures are in place.
