Tell me this was just a fluke...
Yesterday I went fishing with one of our distinguished forum members up in Penrith. It was my first time back in the river after a few years away from fishing and I just accepted my rustiness was the reason why our morning performance was 7-0 in Mr Trout's favour (albeit one of his seven was only as big as his little finger).
We stopped at lunch time (to try out his new Kelly Kettle) and for him to give me a pep talk. "Here, try this" he said, as he handed me what looked like a raggy bit of cotton. "What's that?" I asked, "it's a furled leader" he replied "try it". He spent a few minutes explaining to me what it was and how to fit it onto my line and off we went for round two.
I'm going to split the results of the afternoon into three parts to explain what happened:
First part of afternoon - Both of us with furled leaders: MrT,4-Me,5
Middle part of afternoon - He used the tapered leader I bought in John Norris' that morning. I continued with his raggy bit of cotton: MrT,0-Me,3
End Part of afternoon: We swapped rods completely for two hours: MrT,4-Me,0
This whole experience spooked me - I'm beginning to think there was something quite magic about his raggy bit of cotton. Surely there can't be.
I suppose it also could have been a dodgy leader from Norris'... I'm going to experiment further but I wasn't giving it him back!