Twined or furled leaders

Step five - attachment

By Henk Verhaar

The large top loop can be attached directly to any loop system on the end of the fly line. The small tippet end loop can be used in a number of different ways. My personal favourite is to attach a short length of 1X mono, looped on both ends, to the small loop, with a loop-to-loop hitch. Then a long length of, say, 3X is attached with a loop-to-loop hitch to the 1X loop, and the rest of the tippet (5X, 5X-6X, 5X-6X-7X) is built up with normal knots. You're now ready to make your first cast with your new twined leader butt!

Variations
There's three basic variations:

You can vary monofilament strength (and characteristics of course) to get heavier and stiffer or lighter and more supple leaders. Anything heavier than 3X will however be too stiff to allow even twisting, while anything lighter than 7X will be too fragile to handle (at least for my clumsy hands...).

You can change the strength AND the steepness of the taper also by varying the number of loops, or strands in the different parts of the leader butt. My basic description gives a 7' butt with a taper going from 22 - 16 - 10 - 8 - 6 strands, equivalent in weight, when using 6X mono, to 56/00 - 48/00 - 38/00 - 34/00 - 29/00 mm. Experimentation with steepness is limited (almost) only by your imagination, BUT you'd be hard pressed finding a way to make the final section less than 6 strands...

And finally, you can vary the distances between the plugs, influencing the places in the butt where the transitions are located. However, the given locations are known to work.

Henk Verhaar
e-mail, flyrod@xs4all.nl

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