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3. Leader Question, Page 2

I've never done it, but thought about adding a hook to my blood knots :) .

Yes, fly-lines do crack at the knot, and require a re-tie, esp if you are a zealous caster. Might this say something about one's onstream personality too? How long does it take for you to crack YOUR line tip?? lol

Tim,

How right you were! The rain has thrown so much food stuffs in to the river that the fish all seemed fat-dumb-and happy!

I was slightly scolled when I complained that I was catching nothing but Browns and was wondering aloud where the Brookies were..."Poor Spence! All he can catch is Brown trout...That's too bad!"...We all know the adage, "Thank God for Brook Trout" and usually they out number the Browns by quite a bit...I eventually caught some nice Brookies but it was weird.

I stayed a few days at the Rayburn and there were a few guys there who were new to the sport. I was scolled again when one of the newbies asked me to teach him a blood knot and others there told me that they use a surgeons loop when adding tippet or rebuilding their leader and it's impossible to tie a blood knot in the middle of the river etc...I told them that the same guy who showed me the permanent butt system used to call me in the middle of the winter to see if I was practising my knots...I can tie it practically in my sleep...

Tim. Maybe we are just old dogs in need of new tricks...:)

I ran in to your old partner at the Old Au Sable...It was early in my stay and just a tad ahead of the sulphers...It was supposed to be rainy out and he told me to make sure I had my sulpher box, "Them sulpher's love shitty weather!"...They showed up right on time...

When I get a free moment I'll post some things...I want to make a special post for Mark (Softhackle) Libertone and when I do check it out...I would love your imput...

I really struggled up there with the water level and tried the South a couple times when I shouldn't have. Everything seems turned upside down up there...I caught a really nice Brown in what we call the "Brookie Hole" on the South, and a 14" Brook right tight up to a log where I would of expected a nice Brown...I bought a new pair of wading shoes with the new soles on them and waded High Banks down and felt like I was back in hockey skates and sliding downstream! I soaked my right arm trying to stop my whole self from going in at Lower TU...That would of been appropriate, eh!? "Spence found floating face down...His body was located pressed up against the "Ginger Quill's" dock. His wife is going to kill him!":)

A strange aside...The Angler's of the Au Sable and others paid really big bucks over the last several years to helicopter whole trees in to the river...In my hole on the South they placed one of these right in the middle of a very nice run...This year the whole tree was washed somewhere downstream restoring the run to it's old self...You may know the spot...There is a very large boulder there that I use as a gauge on whether or not I should risk wading downstream...It was completely under water!

Oh well...

Spence

Spence,

At least the fish are in great (FAT!) condition...

It's still a head shaker for me to witness paying for what came naturally over the years and , of course, not doing nearly as good a job... the trees, I mean. First we cut them all down bankside on many stretches of the river and then decide to artificially put them back where they may have fallen naturally. What a shocker... it doesn't work too well... be carful on the South at night; soemtimes they come loose in high water....

Tim

Paul -
Excellent observation. I've seen it most often with new (or poor) casters that don't vary their timing with line length very well and try to come forward too soon. I never thought about it before related to this issue, but this is a common casting fault that can plague aggressive casters as well. BTW, I must confess to trying the little hooks in the leader thing once. Once... What a mess! Oh well...

Spence - That had to be worth a chuckle to yourself.
Did you bother to ask them how they can manage to control a bunch of little sections of wispy nylon in the middle of the river, but can't tie directly from a spool to the leader on their line? Naw, why waste your breath.

Tim, your story about the trees reminded me of what I heard when I lived in Oregon back in '92-'93. The fisheries biologists out there complained that thee was too much logging debris in the smaller streams and that it was blocking fish from their spwaning runs. So they started pulling it ALL out of the streams and then, low and behold, coho salmon populations collapsed because there was nothing to stop the rains from completely blowing the juvenile coho, who spend a few years maturing before smoltification, out of the streams into the ocean before they were ready, i.e. killing them! So then they had to start putting some trees BACK into the streams...Leave Mother Nature well enough alone, she knows what she's doing and all we humans do is just f*ck it up.

BTW, back on topic, I tie blood knots in the middle of streams all the time...who WAS this, Spence??? Don't they make special tools for folks like that?

Jonathon

I'm a nail knotter and do so because I never change a leader, I have other rods set up for different leader/tippets and matching flies. But once I nail knot a leader, and either use one of my own knotted leaders, or start with an unknotted leader, I just leave the butt of the original one one, cut it, and tie a new leader to the old butt. Seldom is the butt damaged to where I have to start anew. And I do have packaged up tied leaders that do not have the butt in the construction, and I tie that to the original butt.

I used to use this method as well. Just leave the butt section length you want for a permanent butt and then tie your new leader to what was left of the old one. Somehow I just got in to the habit of creating a permanent butt with Maxima of the appropriate diameter...I think it evolved from hanging around Gates' Lodge and those guys up there would do it this way.

The diameter of your old leader is the same usually as the new butt end of your new leader you are tying on...It works...

I think I may have explained earlier in this thread that I insert a bodkin a few fractions of an inch into the tip of my flyline and out through the side of the plastic covering of the flyline. I run the leader through the tip and this hole and I then create a nail/tube knot that closes up over the hole I made...The difference between the leader coming out the tip of the flyline or nail knotted to the side probably makes no difference what-so-ever...Old habits are hard to kill once you have gray in your beard! ;)

Spence

Sayfu;

I do that too to save time; how much old leader you leave on there to tie your new one to and do you do a loop-to-loop between them?