8. How To Tie Euro Nymphing Leader (8 of 20)

- [Tom] Although it's possible to hack away with any leader using this technique, it won't be easy or effective. A long leader that incorporates a sighter makes your fishing easier. You can either buy a pre-made Euro nymphing leader or you can make one, as George shows here. - [George] We're going to start off with a nine-foot 4x leader. We're going to cut down to approximately the OX diameter on that leader. Off of that, we're going to add OX sighter material. - A multi-colored sighter, right? - Multi-colored sighter material, about 20, 24-inches, and we're going to do a blood knot. Every change, color change, we're going to do a blood knot to provide points of contrast to a tippet ring. - That's it. - That's it. And then your tip is going to be three to six feet, depending on the speed and depth of the water. But all we're going to do is starting off with basically a nine-foot 4X tapered leader and we're going to add an OX sighter material. So we're going to run our hand down the leader, this nine-foot 4x leader about five feet until we have the OX diameter in sight. Just eyeball this. We're just going to clip this off. All we're going to do is we're going to attach our three tone sighter material, the OX to the OX. Now, what a lot of people will do is they'll cut these tags off flush, but one of the things I like to do with this is I actually leave your tags. So what we're going to do is leave a tag that's maybe, you know, anywhere from like a half an inch to three-quarters of an inch right there. And when you look at this from a side angle profile, it's going to be a lot easier, sometimes by just even having those little tags off to either side, just giving you a better visual. Every change, color change, just do a blood knot. Some people like to do it every color change. Some may only use it once but I prefer sometimes add several in my sighter. And again, same thing. Going to leave the tag ends about half an inch to three-quarters of an inch. And we'll just do that for the same thing between the white and the orange. So our tippet, our sighter is going to be, yeah, 20, 24 inches in length. Now we're just going to add a tippet ring. This is just a standard tippet ring. I think this one's about two and a half millimeter approximately. Doesn't have to be exact. And one of the things we want to do when we're nymph fishing is have a thin diameter tippet immediately off the indicator. The thinner the diameter tippet, the quicker the sink rate. And then also, a tippet as you know, that's level in diameter is going to sink at a uniform rate rather than unevenly. So off this tippet ring, I have an OX but I can go straight from OX to a 6x or a 7x tippet because I have this connection between the tippet ring. The other thing I like about this and this is not going to kill lice here, one of the things I like about the tippet ring is it allows you to create a long-lasting leader, because every time you attach tippet, you attach it directly to the ring. You never cut back on the leader. So like, where I fish for example, in central PA, it's a cloudy location. We don't get a whole lot of UV, a lot of sunlight. I'll have leaders that will last me literally six to nine months before the UV breaks it down. So the tippet ring is great for allowing an angler to keep a leader for a long time. So that's just a basic leader. Again, we're just starting off with a nine-foot 4x leader, cutting back about four feet to the OX diameter. And then, just attaching our three color tone sighter materials and at each color change, we're going to do a blood knot, provide points of contrast but then also to add tag end so we can float this sighter at a distance. Follow by the tippet ring, and then to our tippet. And then the tippet, depending on the conditions, you can range anywhere from three feet all the way to seven or eight feet, depending on the depth of the water that you're fishing. But right there is kind of the basic leader formula that is going to get you started.