Last season was my first, and the beats I fish are dry fly only. I have been using Orvis mud on the last 12 inches or so of my leader to make that part of the leader sink, with mixed / dubious results.

My question is can you add a section of fluoro of say 18 inches as your Tippett so that you can grease the rest of the leader to make it float, and the last section of fluoro sinks?

Will it drag the fly under?

Your thought and experiences would be appreciated,

Cheers

Luddite

It's worth a try,but fine flourocarbon has the same problems breaking through the surface film as co-poly.

Jim

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You can do that. I don't think it will drag your flies down unless they are tiny and not very buoyant. The only presentation problem I would anticipate is that fluorocarbon is in general stiffer than copolymer so some say it impedes the natural movement of the fly.

The mixed results could be explained by the fact that surface tension is affected by many factors like atmospheric pressure etc. It's also true that surface tension on slow pools will be greater than that in faster areas.

Personally I use copolymer for dries.

I can only echo the above comments...

When you are using fine diameter nylon or fluorocarbon for that matter, you will get times when the leader refuses to sink no matter what you do.... Grease on your hands could get on your leader... Also if you use Muscilin, as I do on the front section of my flyline when dry fly fishing can cause loads of probs if you are not careful... Why not make your own de-greaser using fullers earth (Cat litter) and a mixture of washing-up liquid and water... make a paste... I honestly find that a leader on the surface hardly matters when fishing rivers... a totally different kettle of fish on the reservoirs where the fish wont go near a dry if the leader is showing 99.9% of the time.

For the past 3 years what little fishing I've managed has been dry fly on a small river my favourite part of the river has all types of water from fast flowing through just perfect to almost still.

What I prefer to do is use a frog hair supple butt 9' tapered leader along with 2 foot or more (depending on wind conditions) of frog hair co-polymer of the same diameter as the tip of your tapered leader.
I then grease the tip of my flyline and use a fullers earth mud type paste on the whole leader and use gink on my fly. It has worked just perfect for me the only exception being on really fast water where I just use the mud on the tippet section otherwise the leader drags the fly under.

Hope this is of some help to you. ;-)

Far more important than your line not sinking, is line flash, and that to me is what mud stops.
I catch my fair share of trout on the dry, and never try to sink the tippet, but I do use mud on the last 18" especially in slow water.
S.

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"A glint of sun has warmed the air,The flies will soon hatch out, To lure and tempt from their deep lair, The bonnie speckled trout." SKB tackle supporter. I love Furled Leaders.

I'd agree 100% with MrT. Just to add as well that if you sink the tippet before the flie then you are adding a third dimension to the flies susceptibility to drag.

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They fished for pleasure - and they caught it"

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taken from the catch record book at Llanthony Hotel, Honddu Valley, Aug 1942

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Plus I was always led to believe, there was an issue with knots when joining flouro with anything else.

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Henry VI, William Shakespeare

With copoly you need to use a tucked bloodknot otherwise its slips. Basically I too agree with mr T but I like how my method works and the copoly doesn't sink like flouro it sorts of hovers unless turbulent water drags it down.

Hi,

I think the most straightforward answer is to change tippet material. I spent many years searching for a good dry fly tippet and settled on Ultima premium super strong sinking. Of course it isn't marketed as a dry fly tippet but I only care about performance not what its designed for. Upshot it readily sinks when I use Richard Walkers sinkant (I find this better than other brands)- The nylon or coploymer (think its nylon) has good elsticity and excellent strength to diammeter ratio. Its the best dry fly tippet I've used.

I'll tie the tippet to a furled leader treated with red mucilin- I can fish all day- the leader will float like a cork- and with occasional sinkant treatments the tippet will stay under the surface.

Perfect dry fly presentations,

Regards Jon.