Sunday’s Classic / Two Reasons for Greasing Your Leader

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2 Scenarios Where I Grease My Leader. Photo By: Louis Cahill

1. Fishing with Tiny Dry Flies

Many anglers out there shy away from fishing tiny dry flies because they find it difficult to see them and keep them floating during their drifts. Greasing the length of your leader with fly floatant can help your tiny dries float longer and make them easier to see on the water. A good scenario for this would be if you’re fishing a CDC pattern where you don’t apply floatant directly to the fly pattern. By greasing your leader you’ll increase the floatation of your pattern and it will stay afloat longer in more turbulent water.

2. Drifting Nymphs & Emergers in the Film

If you find the standard dry fly dropper rig is failing to get the attention of feeding fish during a hatch, try instead tying on a single emerger or nymph  pattern that imitates the aquatic insects hatching. Then grease your leader from the butt section to within 6″ of your fly. This will allow your fly to drift in or slightly below the surface film where a biggest percentage of the hatching naturals will be found struggling to break through the surface tension. Complete each dead drift by letting your fly swing and rise to the surface to match the behavoir of the emerging bugs.

Keep it Reel,

Kent Klewein
Gink & Gasoline
www.ginkandgasoline.com
hookups@ginkandgasoline.com
 
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10 thoughts on “Sunday’s Classic / Two Reasons for Greasing Your Leader

  1. surprising the things that you read and you go A-HA!!
    why didn’t I think of that??
    Can’t wait for some tiny BWO’s to come off the river,
    Thanks for the Sunday Morning ‘Enlightenment’
    Get wet and Keep it Reel~
    Tight Lines,
    Koz

  2. Nice concise advice, Kent. I like to use some sinking solution on my emergers like Xink to get them just below the surface if that’s where the actions is.

  3. I really need to grease my leaders more. One thing I do like go do when a hatch is going on is to tie on a soft hackle as a dropper and let that sit in the surface film. I’ve landed (and lost) some nice trout that way!

  4. And here I always just did it to get some of the extra Gink off my fingers! Great tips, I especially like the idea for fishing emergers and nymphs close to the surface!

  5. Kent,
    Most of my fishing is with nymphs and therefore I use fluorocarbon tippet material. I’ve noticed that when I do switch to dries, the floatant makes the tippet material cloudy. Is it the floatant or the fluoro?

    To get around this problem, I make sure I leave 6-8″ of tippet material untouched next to the fly. So I sort of backed into this excellent tip.

    Thanks!

  6. Good stuff, yet again. I was nodding along with the first piece of advise in sensible agreement, but really learned something on the second one that I can’t wait to try out. Maybe if my boss knew how much I’ve picked up reading your posts, she won’t fire me for spending FAR too much of my work day doing so….?

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