although it's possible to hack away with any leader using this technique it won't be easy
or effective a long leader that incorporates a cider makes your fishing easier you can either buy
a pre-made euro nymphing leader or you can make one as george shows here we're going to start off
with a 9 foot 4x leader we're going to cut down to approximately the ox diameter on that leader
off of that we're going to add ox stutter material a multi-colored multi-color solid material about
20 to 24 inches and we're going to do a blood knot every change color change we're going to
do a blood knot to provide points of contrast to a tipping ring that's it and that's it and then your
tip is going to be three to six feet depending on the speed and depth of the water okay so all
we're going to do is start off with basically a 9 foot 4x tapered leader we're going to add an ox
cider material so we're going to run our hand down the leader this 9 foot 4x leader about
5 feet until we have the ox diameter in sight just eyeball this we're just going to clip this off
what we're going to do is we're going to attach our three tone
solder material the ox to the ox now what a lot of people will do is they'll cut
the these tags off flush but one of the things i'd like to do with this is i'll actually leave
your tags so what we're going to do is leave a tag that's maybe you know anywhere from like a
half an inch to three quarters of an inch right there and when you look at this from a side
angle profile it's going to be a lot easier sometimes by just even having those little
tags off to either side just giving you a better visual every change color change
just do a blood knot
some people like to do it every color change some may only use it once but
i prefer to sometimes add several in my cider
and again same thing i'm going to leave the tag ends on half an inch to three quarters of an inch
and we'll just do that for the same thing between the white and the orange
so our tippet our slider is going to be
20 24 inches in length now we're just going to add a tippet ring
this is just a standard tipping ring i think that this one's about two and a half millimeter
approximately it doesn't have to be exact and one of the things we want to do when we're nim
fishing is have a thin diameter tip it immediately off the indicator the thinner the diameter tip it
the sink the quicker the sink rate and then also a tip it as you know that's level and diameter
is going to sink at a uniform rate rather than unevenly so off this tipper ring i have an ox
but i can go straight from ox to a 6x or a 7x tippet because i have this connection between the
the tippet ring the other thing i like about this and this is not going to kill lysine or one of the
things i like about the tipper ring is it allows you to create a long lasting leader because every
time you attach tip it you attach it directly to the ring you never cut back on the leader
so like where i fish for example in central pa it's it's a cloudy location
we don't get a whole lot of uv last sunlight i'll have leaders that will last me literally
six to nine months before the ub breaks it down so the tipping ring is great for allowing an angler
to keep a leader for a long time so that's just a basic leader again we're just starting off with a
nine foot four x leader cutting back about four feet to the ox diameter and then just attaching
our three color tone cider materials and at each color change we're going to do a blood knot
provide points of contrast but then also to add tag ends so we can float the cider at a distance
followed by the tipper ring and then to work tip it
and then to tip it depending on the conditions you can range anywhere from three feet
all the way to seven or eight feet depending on the depth of the wire that you're fishing
but right there is kind of the basic leader formula that's going to get you started
tip it and droppers often confuse people but the concept is quite simple as george tells us here
tip at length is determined really by how close you're going to be fishing to you and also the
depth of the water if i'm fishing up close and i'm fishing three foot of water on average and we're
gonna be fishing basically underneath the rod tip my tip at length is gonna be about four feet
if i'm fishing big water like on the farmington where i can't get up on the fish if i have to cast
further out and at an angle right usually the tippet length is going to be about twice the
length of the average depth of the i'm fishing and four five six x depending on the size of the flies
and the water correct normally four x is pretty good in basically high water normally back home
normally 5x 6x is probably my go to diameters and we have the clinch nut with our ox slider material
again the nice thing about the tipper ring it allows us to attach a level section of tippet
material and the idea with the level diameter is everything's going to sink at a quick cigarette
i like fluorocarbon just not because of the invisibility factor but because of the abrasion
uh resistance you're going to be pulling your tip it's going to be underneath the water obviously
going against rocks hard substrate and so forth and i find that fluorocarbon is far more abrasive
resistant than nylon so i lose far fewer flies and it sinks a little quicker exactly now you're just
doing a standard clinch doing a standard clinch knot not an improved clinch not an improved clinch
no i find that the center clinch as long as the tag ends are pulled tight i find it just to be
just as strong as an improved clinch yeah now we can fish one fly or we can fish two flies you know
if we're fishing three foot of water you know we have a four foot section to tip it right here so
this is where my point fly is going to be if i want to add a second fly
i start off with four feet and then what i'm going to do is just run my hand up the
leader to wherever i want to add a dropper and we're just going to add another section of 5x
using a surgeon's knot take off about eight to ten inches and wherever i want to add
that dropper i'm just going to do a two turn orvis tippet knot
that's it that's your that's your upper fly and your dropper that's my upper fly and your
point fly is on the other and eventually if you change your flies enough with the dropper you
all you need to do is just when this gets short and stubby just trim this off
and you can pull off another section of 45x and then you can basically do a clinch knot around the
standing part on the stand part and slide it down and that just allows you to keep the dropper going
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