Thread: French leader and dries

I've seen a lot of references to dry fly fishing with a french leader. I thought the whole point of the French leader was to use tungsten to turn it over?

How do you go about fishing dries with this setup and does anyone have a link to a video showing said method?

There is a miss use of phrase here. French/Spanish Nymphing, should have always been "Fishing French/Spanish Leader". Sorry I've no links or vids but it's down to design and make up of the leader.

There is no reason this can't work. I recently used one whilst using one unweighted nymph. In effect, much the same as a dry? With enough weight in the nylon it can be like a fly line. I recently was fishing a twenty foot French leader on a sub six foot soft rod. It worked. I expected all sort of problems but it was just like a regular line.

There is a lot of convention that needs another looking at IMHO. Tenkara made me take a look at French Nymphing which looked so impossiblely difficult just a few months ago. Now I'm thinking about doing all my small stream stuff with nothing else. It's not a fad, it's my experience of trying stuff and finding it works.

I mentioned on a post a couple of weeks back that I caught a brownie using a FL and a dry for the first time. I did have a favourable wind and I spotted the fish rise a few times over a couple of minutes so I dispatched with the nymphs and tied on a TMC size 17 SSHE and cast it out.

It turned over well enough and on the second or third cast it took the fly. I have since then got hold of a better FL and I have no doubt that the one I am currently using would present a dry fly well enough in the right conditions.

Don't have any links but on the fish on French nymphing dvd the method is shown and is successful

Cheers Baz

On my last trip of the trout season I had a Hends camou leader on - the nine metre version - and found myself amongst a pod of smutting grayling. The leader turned over a size 24 paraphid accurately, not yet tried a European leader on bigger tries, but I'd certainly try.

With the right French leader set up, once the wind isn't squally or badly in your face, I find it a great method for dries. Can be very accurate too, like any fly line with the right technique but with lighter touchdown and slower onset of drag, maybe by a few seconds, depending on the pace and shape of the current etc. But 5 seconds of less drag can be vital on a river. I have probably used a conventional fly line and leader very little this season, mainly using Sunray 3 etc, silk a day French leader but this is also partly to do with finding a method that allows me to fish dries and change to FN quickly without putting on a new line /leader.

Like quite a few others who've already commented - I fish dries fairly regularly with a 'FL' on. I really don't like changing leaders when fishing as it's pretty rare that there are steady rises on most of the rivers I fish - so tend to just tie on a dry to the end of my usual euronymphing rig (with the dropper removed).

Some leaders are better than others, and some tapers/stiffness/densities are better suited to casting a dry. I typically use .28 level flurocarbon as a FL, which is stiff enough to turn over pretty nicely with #22 to #14 size dries.

Having a light, fast action rod can help too - these take less weight to load effectively and so are typically better with casting light flies on light lines. It might take a little while to get the hang of casting though. I find that over-emphasising the 'stop' in the cast helps turn it all over.