9. How To Add Droppers To A Euro Nymphing Leader (9 of 20)

- [Tom] Tippet and droppers often confuse people, but the concept is quite simple as George tells us here. - [George] Tippet length is determined really by how close you're going to be fishing to you and also the depth of the water. If I'm fishing up close and I'm fishing three foot of water on average, and we're going to be fishing basically under the rod tip, my tippet length is going to be about four feet. If I'm fishing big water like on the Farmington where I can't get up on the fish where I have to cast further out and at an angle, usually the tippet length is going to be about twice the length of the average depth I'm fishing. - And four, five, six X depending on the size of the flies in the water and... - Correct. Normally four X is pretty good in basically high water. Normally back home, normally five X, six X is probably my go to diameters and we have the clinch knot with our 0X starting material. Again, the nice thing about the tippet ring, it allows us to attach a level section of tippet material. And the idea with the level diameter is everything is going to sink at this quick sink rate. I like fluorocarbon not because of the invisibility factor, but because the abrasion resistance. You're going to be pulling... your tippet is going to be underneath the water, obviously, going against rocks, hard substrate, and so forth. And I find that fluorocarbon is far more abrasive resistant than nylon so I'll use far fewer flies. - And sinks a little quicker. - Exactly. - Now, you're just doing a standard clinch to... - Doing a standard clinch knot. - Not an improved clinch? - Not improved clinch. No. I find that the center clinch, as long as the tag ends are pulled tight, I find it just to be just as strong as an improved clinch. Now we can fish one fly, we can fish two flies, you know. If we're fishing three for the water, you know, we have a four-foot section of tippet right here. So this is where my point fly is going to be. If I want to add a second fly, I start off with four feet and then what I'm going to do is just run my hand up the leader to wherever I want to add the dropper and we're just going to add another section of five X using a surgeon's knot. Take off about 8 to 10 inches and wherever I want to add that dropper, we're just going to do a two-turn Orvis tippet knot. [silence] - That's it? That's your upper fly for your dropper? - That's my upper fly. - And your point fly is on the other. - And eventually, if you change your flies enough for the dropper, all you need to do is just when this gets short and stubby, just trim this off, and you can pull off another section of four or five X and then you can basically do a clinch knot... - Around the standing part. - ...around a stand part and slide it down. And that just allows you to keep the dropper going. - Okay. There's a rainbow and it took the upper fly which is an ugly purple nymph with a pig bead at the head. More of what you think of as a rainbow fly instead of the mop fly. Yeah, cute little rainbow. Looks like it could be a wild fish too, it as nice colors on it, clean fins.