Making your own Leaders for Light Nymphing and Dry Fly

Making up your own leaders and deciding on their structure can create a debate that involves a mass of recommendations and advice from many sources. I generally find that simple is better and this is some of the leaders I use in waters all over and find them very effective and easy to make up. 

Just like fly-tying stick to what and the material you have confidence in and you will never go to far wrong. 

Starting from the fly line here is the leader I use for Dry Flies

Length	Size/Diameter	Notes
45cm	0.50mm	This can be made of the mono, bicolour strike as an indicator or the material of your preference.
50cm	0.45mm	Use blood knots to join the pieces together
55cm	0.40mm
60cm	0.35mm
65cm	0.30mm
70cm	0.25mm
75cm	0.20mm
80cm	0.15mm
After this you can add in your tippet material of your choice e.g.: frog hair or stroft. Once you make up the leader without the tippet you must boil the leader for exactly 3mins, bring a sauce pan to the boil and turn down the heat to allow to simmer and place in the leader and time it. the over all length of the leader should be 16.39 the the tippet will bring it to 18 foot.

This is the leader I use for light Nymphing

Length	Size/Diameter	Notes
80CM	0.50mm	This can be made of the mono or bicolour strike indicator also this can be drop or spring indicator, I like to make my own spiral out of Stren this works really well.
75CM	0.45mm	I often use a second indicator in the third or fourth section for when I am fishing shallow water and only half the leader is in the water, this can be made of straight bicolour strike indicator or Stren, but must be the correct diameter.
70CM	0.40mm
65CM	0.35mm
60CM	0.30mm
55CM	0.25mm
50CM	0.20mm
45CM	0.15mm
Again you must boil this leader to give it a stretch and this will help stop you snapping off the tippet when you are using very small nymphs. This leader will allow a much tighter roll over and slap down the nymphs into the water letting the nymph to penetrate the surface film quicker.

These products will enhance your visibility of takes and are very easy to add to your cast.




The springs can act as flotation devices also especially the larger spirals which are very good for suspending  small mircro nymphs over weed or dirty river beds.

The springs are ideal for spotting those gentle takes from nervous trout