Understanding Carp Leaders

When you start chasing any new species of fish, keeping things as simple as you can can pay off well. For example, when starting to fish for trout most anglers use a standard 9 foot monofilament leader, which can get them through most situations that they encounter when taking their first steps. Then as you grow into the game, and start learning different aspects of fly fishing, most anglers at the very least start experimenting with different lengths of leaders, and whether they are fluorocarbon or monofilament.

I can see the same thing happening with carp fly angling, seemingly at a bigger scale, meaning that a lot of discussion about the gear used to target carp is simplified to the lowest common denominator. Whereas in other aspects of fly fishing, you have entire books and magazines devoted to dissecting leader formulas, but a fish like the carp, with its myriad feeding habits and behaviors, is usually lumped into “a nine foot 2x leader works all the time”. Point being, carp deserve a bit more of an in-depth dive into what leaders work best for specific situations. While this isn’t a full on “going down the rabbit hole” discussion, it’s a good starting off point to cover the basics and the situations in which you might use them.

Fluorocarbon or Monofilament

The age old question: should you use mono, or fluoro? And the answer will depend greatly on your fishery and time of year. For surface feeding fish, I tend to tie up my leaders with mostly mono, as it floats better than fluoro, which sinks. If you want to have a high riding dry fly, keep that leader mono all the way to the fly, but for flies that sit in the surface film, or just below it, I’ll add a section of 2-3 feet of fluoro as the terminal tippet, which sinks the section just before the fly, making less surface disturbance and giving the fly the action you want.

For most sub-surface feeding situations, I am running a 100% fluoro leader, tapered down from 40lb to 8-10lb, from 10-25 ft long depending on the situation. Fluoro sinks, so you tend to have a better connection with a sinking fly, and ironically some of the cheaper fluoro is more abrasion resistant than the expensive stuff. For peace of mind, and to be a better friend to your wallet, buy big spools of Seaguar Basix, which is usually from $9-12 for a large 200yrd spool. I carry spools of 20, 15, 10 and 8lb on me, and that way I can adjust my leader for most situations.

Length of Leader

The most common change you’ll make to your leader when you’re out on the water is the length of it. For short casts in heavy cover, a leader as short as 6-7ft can come in handy, while when you’re dry fly fishing and making longer casts, I often run leaders up to 25 ft long, to aid in a soft turnover and to allow me to pick out specific fish without lining others.

When fishing in heavy cover, around a lot of brush and trees, you can get away with a straight section of 4-6 feet of 15-20 lb fluoro, and I use fluoro around the brush since it's more abrasion resistant than mono in those situations. Running a straight leader also means no knots, and no knots between sections to get caught on brush and weeds is a good thing. Since you won’t be doing much casting, you don’t need the leader to turn over as smoothly, in heavy cover most of your casts are dapping or just really short drag and drop style presentations.

On the flats, when fishing to tailing fish in a bit more open water, I like to have a 12-20ft leader, usually made up of sections of 3 feet increments of 40lb, 20lb, 15lb, 10lb, finishing off with a longer 4-5 foot section of 8lb, which can be trimmed back or cut back a section if you need a heftier tippet, or shorter leader. You can lengthen the back section for a softer landing, or shorten it up for heavier flies. But I like the longer leader as it allows me to drop my fly into the water further from the fish, as well as picking out my target fish through a group of fish without lining them with the fly line itself.

For dry fly fishing, I run a similar leader to the flats style leaders, but I lengthen the butt section for a little smoother landing, and tend to keep my leaders in the 20-25 ft lengths, as it again lets me pick out fish from big groups of carp feeding up top. Surface feeding carp can be quite spooky as well, so the longer leader helps spook less fish, which is always a plus in my book.

Tie it Together

You may have noticed I didn’t bring up store bought leaders, which are completely fine as a fishing tool, I just prefer to customize my own, giving you more versatility on the water. None of these are hard and set rules, but more a platform for you to play with in your own scenarios on the water. The awesome thing about fly fishing for carp, is how varied the fishing can be for them, even just within the same watershed, so a standard “one size fits all” approach to your leader setup will probably hold you back in advancing in your carp on the fly adventures.

And to bring back some simplicity, don’t jump from a 9 ft standard trout leader to a 25 ft dry fly carp leader, casting a leader that is longer than you can handle won’t help you, it’ll get in your way. Work your way into longer leaders incrementally, and just lengthen by a foot or two each time. Your leader is there to help you, make it work for you, and see the results on the water!