Why fish a furled leader?

We get asked a lot about furled leaders, their advantages and disadvantages.  I am by no means an expert on them, but I have used and made...

We get asked a lot about furled leaders, their advantages and disadvantages.  I am by no means an expert on them, but I have used and made a few.  We carry Cutthroat Furled Leaders here at Big Y Fly Co and they have been a hit!
In leaders, you have about four options:
1).  Use a factory built tapered leader
2).  Build a leader from several pieces of material gradually decreasing diameter. 
3).  Use a level piece of material.
4).  Use a  Furled Leader.

Factory built tapered leaders are great.  They are easy to use, well built for specific purposes from tarpon to dry fly fishing for trout.  They can easily help and angler catch hundreds of fish.  They are also strong mostly transparent on the water.  For those reasons, they are very popular.

The downsides are that they are expensive.  If you don't constantly re-build a leader from chunks of larger tippet, you are likely buying new leaders when you go fishing.  Factory leaders are also prone to wind knots, reductions in strength, abrasion and a slough of other minor issues like UV weakening and bug spray...

Many anglers choose to build their leaders from spools of tippet.  I spent most of one winter in Idaho building leaders for our fishing lodge.  Fun!  But not really.  On the plus side, you can make them stronger when you need to (adding more beef in the back), or you can make them longer and more delicate for spring creek fishing.  The downside is that you have to spend your time building a leader.  I guess its not that bad.  Another downside though, is that there are six or seven blood knots on the water creating drag and disturbances.  This can be bad if you know a spooky trout or two.

Using a level piece of tippet off of your fly line is a really bad idea if you are trout fishing with a dry line.  The fly will have serious issues turning over, getting wind knots, catching in the breeze among other things...

The fourth options is using a furled leader.  Despite having been around for hundreds of years, they are only now becoming popular with modern anglers. 

What is a Furled Leader?

Instead of using a single strand monofilament as a leader, a furled leader is many strands of a fine thread or mono twisted together.  They usually have a loop or a tippet ring at the end.  A 7.5' leader generally includes about 90' of material that is woven back and forth and then twisted together.

Furled leaders have been used in fly fishing for centuries, and were made from materials like horse hair.  Today, we use very thin level monofilament, or even tying thread to create our leaders.

Furled leaders are twisted together

With a tippet ring or a loop on the end, an angler just needs to add 3-5' of tippet to the end and get on the river.  These leaders can have a taper by adding more material at the butt end when they are made.  If you are really curious about the process in which they are made, you should get on youtube and watch.  It is very interesting and more intricate than I had first thought.

Why?

There are a couple of major advantages to furled leaders.  The first is supple presentation.  Because it is made from a delicate, soft line like 7x tippet, it lands softly and is not stiff. 

Another advantage is that it is strong.  7x tippet may be 2# strength, but every time it is doubled over, the strength of it doubles.  By the time you have wrapped 90' of tippet up into a twisted, doubled over leader, it has a lot of strength, but maintains the supple characteristics of a single strand.

A third advantage is that it is very durable.  These things last much longer than a single strand of tapered mono.  They are more resistant to abrasion and wind knots.  When used with a tippet ring, you will never have to cut them back.  I have been using the same one for three summers now on my Tenkara rod and it is still rocking.

Colored section for strike detection

The fourth advantage is it's shock absorption.  I was introduced to furled leaders in Mexico when fishing for Rooster fish.  Those things hit hard!  We made really basic furled 4' butt sections out of leader material and it really made a difference.  There was just a little more give and that gave us enough time to hit 'em hard and let 'er run.  We lost far fewer fish once we started using those.  Plus it saved us all sorts of money on the leaders we were running out of.

The shock absorption is key if you want to use really light tippets, especially if you have a fast rod that doesn't have much flex in the tip, OR if you are using a low stretch line like RIO In-Touch series.  That stretch that you gave up when buying the In-Touch was beneficial to many anglers.

So Why Not?

One argument against furled leaders is that they are not clear like mono.  Fish can see them more easily.  If that is a concern, they might not be for you.  Even furled leaders made from monofilament are not as clear as a single strand of mono.


Another argument is that they do not turn over big streamers as easily as a tapered leader built for streamers, like Rio's Big Nasty.  I can attest that if you make or buy a furled leader made from a stiffer material, you will get a leader that will turn over a big clouser with no problem.  I think we were using 15# or so for our furled leaders in Mexico, but we were not using 90' of it to make our leaders.  We were using far less than that, but it had the same effect.

Are there Different Types?

Furled leaders are just like tapered leaders in that there is a furled leader built for any given situation.  Cutthroat Furled Leaders make a bunch of leaders, and we are carrying several of the most popular types and sizes.  The Dry Fly leader is very soft and thin, and is great for throwing little flies on the creek, while the Big Bug Leader is great for throwing bass poppers, stoneflies and streamers.  There are leaders for nymphing, czech nymphing, saltwater, steelheading and just about everything else.  We are carrying a selection that should be sufficient for most trout anglers, but look for more of these in the future. 

Andrew Perrault
-Fishing, usually not catching