There's a big difference between a Rod Dibble furled leader and a Terenzio silk leader. The former is delicate and can take tippet to 3' without the presentation spooking fish. It casts well too. Very highly recommended.

The Terenzio I would now regard as more of a line extension to take your 5-weight down to a 3 say (I don't have a scales good enough to work out the exact weight). Some I know have had problems with the silk leaders hinging - this is not a problem I've had.

I've been using a fairly fine Stroft on the end, which also seems to work well, although I quite like the robustness of 6lb stuff for pulling htings out of trees and reeds. People forget that that's a big part of fishing for some people.

Had a fun, if windy day out testing various things, including some CDC Reverse Paras inspired by bigbadtroutfisher and Roy Christie. Of the five fish I cast to, two took the fly (one twice!) and I landed all of them, but they were so big it would make everyone on the forum ashamed if I told you anything more.

At times I struggled to tell the difference between the CDC Para and the natural at distance - pure luck becasue I tied the former on before I got to the river. An excellent fly.

Had I been fishing New Marmalade Style (ie with the hook point clipped off) I would have claimed three fish (it's not my fault if some are greedy). As it was I didn't actually get the hook into any of them. Sigh. I was lying about them being big. And the landing thing.

Still, that's an improvement on last time when all I had was a follow.

However, saw a deer, a kite and my partner catch the same rush on four sucessive backcasts which is great, because laughing at other people when they're struggling beats fishing anyday. I did keep my face straight for the first two, but had to chuckle on the third and nearly fell in on the fourth.

He had just secured himself a Sage 3100 as Pom ordered, chopped a Pitsford line in half and stuck it all on his 6' Orvis Flea. As far as I can tell, that rod is about as floppy as an old style cane job: not an easy cast and needs the whole shebang sloooooowed down to work. Would that be right? I also think we were trying to put out way too much line with it.

As an aside, I find switching from the weight of cane to a 6' carbon job very awkward: that's not a complaint about carbon just an observation that the whole weight issue with cane can work the other way round for some.

The Pirate line turned into a sink tip in fast water: would that be because it's needle knotted? This is not a dig at Pirate, btw: I shall message him and seek a solution.

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Wanted: A polarised monocle.

I had tried furled leaders before and rejected them but was converted to Rod Dibble furled leaders after seeing Stuart Crofts using them and Rod kindly sent me one to try.

I use a short and very light RD furled leader with a 3' to 4' tippet and find it spot on for small and medium river dries. I thought there might be issues with spooking fish but Stuart rose fish after fish on the Derbyshire Wye and completely allayed my fears.

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“There is no more lovely country than Monmouthshire in early spring. Nowhere do the larks sing quite so passionately, as if somehow inspired by the Welsh themselves. There is a blackbird on every thorn and a cock chaffinch, a twink as they call him there, on every bush...... It moved me profoundly. I had been spared to see another spring, and I thank God for it.”

Oliver Kite
“A Spring Day on the Usk”
A Fisherman’s Diary