Since it’s Spring now I feel more eager for the coming Summer fishing than I’ll ever be. Playing around with leaders in the garage recently sparked a few tweaks to my regular set up. I’m all for reducing the amount of knots in a leader but sometimes constructing them is dictated by demands.
Most of my 10wt fishing utilizes 20-30lb flouro leaders around the 7-9ft mark. The problem I have with adding bite tippets is not in the tying of joining knots (slim beauties, blood, albright etc). It’s more the issue of wasting a good length of leader in retying sections, in particular any doubles. There’s an element of resourcefulness rather than stinginess, why waste perfectly good materials?
With this in mind I got busy and came up with a solution. I don’t have a fancy name for it, probably never will and someone has probably already tied one very similar. But this set up made a lot of sense to me for the high stress demands of Kingfish.
- Start out with leader material of choice and tie a mini bimini for fly line loop-loop attachment. Measure out length required, less the bite tippet (NB include >300mm for AG chain knot)
- Tie a solid ring on using the AG chain knot. I have been using this knot on stick baits for a few years and it’s bulletproof. The fact it passes twice around the ring means more load distribution, similar to the catspaw. These Decoy rings are tiny and rated to 300lb! Even if they break at half that it’s still 6 times the leader rating. These rings are great – smoothed inner edges, no hard edge for knot to chaff againgst. Plus the shape of them allows AG chain to bed well and not slide around.
- Add bite tippet using 4-5 turn Uni or preferred knot, moisten and tighten hard.
- Select fly, tie on and bugger off fishing.
- Once your tippet is too short just add another piece. Too easy.
Saltwater Fly Fishing guide. Tauranga, Bay of Plenty 