With the great advice from several guys on the fly line issue and now settling to try an intermediate line. Maybe I should of added to the debate,
what leader material do u prefer? length? and breaking strain / diameter etc do you guys find helps best?
thanks in advance.
Gareth

I would go for some 10-15 lb fluro or normal mono. You can get away with 6-8lb but you may get snapped. I prefer maxima chameleon but depending on where you are fishing. Maxima is ideal for abrasion on rocks etc. Spiderwire is on special just now from Grommit or other new line available from Grommitt and SunkistBob. Check the lines section on here. Sure some of the experts will give more specific advice.

Kevin

Very much depends upon how / when you're fishing.

Midsummer, early evening (or even during the day if you can't wait) and you want to fish the fast water at the head of pools, a 'traditional' wet fly leader (or even dry fly) down as low as 4lb BS, 9 to 12ft or so might be appropriate.

However, fishing deep, casting a sinking line upstream, following it downstream in above average flows might result in a leader of 4 to 6ft in length and 15 to 20lb BS. I'm talking the larger sea trout rivers here where there's the chance of some very large fish and you're using appropriately large flies.

A big surface fly, a Jambo or something equivalent, will also need a heavy leader to turn it over.

At night, sea trout are rarely leader shy and it's always better to err on the side of caution.

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If your using fluorocarbon of any make your poisoning the environment

Use Drennan subsurface. Very reliable and will degrade in the environment unlike flouro which will be around longer than a Chernobyl mole.

Hi Gareth, I'd try Mono first of all. Something like Drennan Double Strength.
It'll give you that little confidence boost knowing you have a strong leader and won't have too drasic an effect on the line tip, ie, drag down.

If have no luck with that, then try the FC.

Mono's: Drennan DS is quite cheap too and is a good leader material. As for breaking strain, well that's up to you. Try 10lb as a start point. You can always increase the strength if need be.

Others to try are Rio Powerflex (Super supple), Maxima Chameleon (Stiffer with less twist), Airflo Ultra Strong (Soft), Fulling Mill Co-Pol (Supple and strong).

Lots of choices but ultimately your decision. Hope this helps.

Best regards

Stuart

Hi Guys,

My preference is Spiderwire, I used it for the first time this year.

I used to use Drennan Subsurface and Maxima Ultragreen.

The normal size of the sea trout we fish is is 1-2 lbs so I don't need a heavy leader.

So I use about a 11ft leader with a single dropper.

KS

I've noticed a tendency in the last (say) fifteen years or so for people's preferred leader/tippet choice to get progressively thinner, due to advances* in line technology - yet the flies used are if anything heavier (especially bead-heads). This seems strange, as fly size and weight ought to be matched to leader stiffness for optimum presentation. To take an example at random; 10lb Drennan Double-Strength has the equivalent diameter of a 'normal' 6lb mono, and therefore the same stiffness. It works best with a regular unweighted fly of around size 8, or a correspondingly smaller weighted pattern. It won't turn over a heavy size 4 sea trout fly, or a longshank 6 reservoir streamer - yet so often you see anglers fishing with similarly ill-matched combinations.

Breaking strain ought not to be considered a guide to hook size; better to use diameter (or the old X rating system if you like) and take advantage of any increased strength offered by the newer type of monos if you wish. For me, I'm quite happy with regular mono; Drennan Sub-Surface is my preference, but Maxima is just as good. I wish Drennan did S-S in 0.005" as well (0.13mm or 6X) which would be about 2lb, as I find 0.006" (0.15mm or 5X) too thick for small dries; as it is I settle for using one of the high-tech tippets, even though I often end up tying a 4lb rated tippet to the end of some 3lb Sub-Surface!

Going back to sea-trout or reservoir flies, I would use 0.011" for size 6 standard or 8 longshank flies, 0.012" for a size bigger, and so on, whatever the bs might be. In standard mono those sizes equate to approx 8lb, 10lb etc. For weighted flies I go up one or even two mono gauges, depending on how much weight is involved.

*I'm not convinced myself...

Well I feel I should add my findings so far here.

I have fished flourocarbon for years but for the past couple of years I've stopped buying it for various reasons. 1 being it is expensive and has no real advantage for me it sinks fast and drags dry flies under also I've had it snap on me loads of times after hooking decent size sea trout.

So now I use 3 types well makes of leader material but I'm always on the lookout for others. But mainly I use maxima ultra green reason being I used chameleon years ago and found it didn't knot as well as the green stuff so I use this for seatrout in 8lb plus BS. The others I use for lighter fishing for trout and these are Froghair copolymer and wychwood finesse I think it is basically the same as frog hair but a wee bit cheaper. I find these are quite supple and thinner than nylon so better for use with small nymphs and wets and great for dries.

Also like the Froghair supple tapered leaders but I'm gonna try some that are sold here after asking a few questions.