Furled leaders.

[MrTrout]

Hope this is the right place, excuse me if it isn't, but I just wondered how many users of furled leaders we have on here.
I did a search, but "the word Furled has never been used on any post", apparently. :hahaha:
I use them all the time for my dry and wet fly fishing, I am biased of course, as I make them and supply them.
Been using them now for three years, and no pun intended, but I'm hooked on them totally, and can't see myself ever going back to tapered mono leaders.
Be interested to hear your views.
Cheers, Steven.

[StalkingLuke]

Hi Steven
I have tried furled leaders in the past and found it harder to turn the fly over properly, I was mainly using small dries with a fairly light rod but really struggled into a wind. It just seemed to make sense to me that a single strand of mono would offer less air resistance but it might well be more to do with my casting style! I guess from a boat casting with the wind this wouldn't be a problem.

I would be interested to hear why you use them and what advantages you find over mono?


cheers
Luke

[MrTrout]

Hi Steven
I have tried furled leaders in the past and found it harder to turn the fly over properly, I was mainly using small dries with a fairly light rod but really struggled into a wind. It just seemed to make sense to me that a single strand of mono would offer less air resistance but it might well be more to do with my casting style! I guess from a boat casting with the wind this wouldn't be a problem.

I would be interested to hear why you use them and what advantages you find over mono?


cheers
Luke

Hi Luke, for me it's the opposite, I find a furley cuts into a downstream breeze better than a mono one, when casting upstream.
Don't forget you still have a mono tippet attached to the FL, although shorter, usually the same length as the FL, so a 5ft one would have 5ft of straight mono.
I mainly fish rivers with a dry fly, and again I find the FL turns the fly over better for me.
If boat fishing with a team of three loch flies, I use a tapered mono 12ft leader with attached droppers, as the wind is usually behind me, and presentation isn't as crucial.
FL's last a long time, have no memory whatsoever, especially the thread ones I make, and well greased up they float high, so no water spray when lifting off to recast.
It took me perhaps a week to adapt to them initially, but now it's like riding a bike.
I use red mucilin to float them, but I recently got some floatant made from red dear fat, produced by Churchill, a member on here, and that also works very well.
Like all things, they are a bit of a Marmite thing, love em or hate em.
Hope that helps, but I have many many repeat customers now, that are totally fixed on them.
Steven.

[Mark]

Any chance of some pictures chaps as I have never heard of them until now.

[Nobby]

I've used them but didn't like the springy, stretchey action too much. I bought them from eBay in America for just a few bob as in the UK they seem to cost at least a Tenner!


http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?q=furled ... 2,s:0,i:71


Hmmm...there's a few on eBay much cheaper these days...


http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/3-x3-ft-handm ... 3a72a36b73

[GloucesterOldSpot]

I haven't used them yet, but I purchased a couple in the winter and have put one on my lightest line (4-weight Cortland) ready for this spring. I still hope to get out over Easter to try it, but the forecast is not looking ideal at the moment.

As to the physical properties, I fully expect the furled leader to turn over better than a mono one - as it is claimed to do. There are three physical forces acting on a line being cast - gravity, momentum and air-resistance. Gravity is a constant within the range of practical fly fishing and can be discounted as a variable. Momentum is simply mass (weight) x speed, so the heavier something is for a given speed, the further it will go, and the faster a given weight is travelling, the further it will go. However, air resistance varies as the square of speed, so a line travelling twice as fast meets four times as much resistance, whereas a line twice as heavy travelling at half the speed will only experience a quarter of the resistance, unless it's also thicker - if it's twice the diameter it will meet twice as much resistance, which is still half what the fast-moving line experiences. Note that whatever works best in still air will still be best into a wind - wind after all is just air moving towards you; the effect is the same for all possible combinations of line. It only ceases to have a bearing if you cast in a vaccuum.

There are three main properties inherent in any line which vary according to material - density, stiffness and diameter. The heavier a line is for any given thickness and flexibility, the better it will cast, as can be seen from the previous paragraph. The stiffer it is, the worse it will cast, because a stiff line won't bend into as tight a loop when moving through the air. For any given diameter, the wider the loop the more air-resistance it meets. Therefore the optimum properties of any line for fly casting - and this applies equally to the leader - is one that is as dense as possible and as supple as possible. Obviously, if you want it to float it cannot be much more dense than water, though it is possible to float a line slightly heavier by greasing it, as was done with the old silk lines. If you want positive buoyancy (such as you get with modern floating fly lines) you have to accept a lower density than water, which means it will be thicker for any given weight/length ratio. As long as the material is not so light that it needs to be four times as thick to achieve a given mass, the increase in diameter will not create as much air resistance as the thinner alternative moving twice as fast. The only variable left to you is suppleness - and a furled leader is much more supple than a mono leader of the same mass - and it's mass that you need if it is to achieve the necessary momentum.

In practice, a furled leader is not significantly thicker than the equivalent mass in mono, so the slight increase in air resistance is more than compensated by increased flexibility and the consequent reduction in loop width.

I became involved in a similar discussion regarding the casting into a wind on another forum some time back, and was told in no uncertain terms I was wrong by several AGPAI instructors. I subsequently had a PM from another contributor saying they'd been out and tested different line weights and casting speeds, and found what I'd said was true.

[George387]

I have to say Steven makes the best furled leaders I have fished with and I have fly fished for over 35 years without them and I tried them once last year and to be honest I wouldn't be without them now, my presentation has increased 10 fold.

[MrTrout]

Wow, that's some post GOS, very interesting, I just tie one on and go fishing, and they work for me. :hahaha:
Thanks George, glad you like them. :thumb:
Steven.

[StalkingLuke]

Yes what a reply GOS I'm surprised Snape hasn't been along with his red correcting pen or perhaps there are no mistakes!
I'm going to have to give one a try I guess, do I just PM you mrtrout?