Salmon fishing at Ballynahinch

While in Ireland recently with family, several of us spent a day of fishing on the Ballynahinch River in Galway.  The river is owned by the Ballynahinch castle estate which has catered to salmon anglers for generations. They take their salmon very seriously as evidenced by this notice posted in the castle pub.

The scenery was gorgeous and the river was the cleanest I have ever seen in my life, but we had not seen any evidence of salmon all day.  It was sunny that day which generally makes for poor salmon fishing. As we were talking to the guide with our backs to the water we heard a noise behind us which sounded like a cannonball being thrown into the water.  The guide got very excited and said it was a salmon.  I moved upstream of the pool where we believed the salmon to be and cast to the far side of the river, letting my silver badger fly swing downstream across the current.  After about ten swings over the same spot, my line tightened and I saw a long gleam of silver flash in the water.  I slowly worked the fish toward the bank but 30 seconds into the fight my line popped right back at me, hook and all and stuck me cleanly in the nose.  It was a bittersweet moment.  I sure would have loved to land that beautiful fish, but to simply dance with it for a moment in time was mysteriously satisfying.

Long Live the Leader

There is something about how a smoothly tapered commercial leader turns over a fly that cannot be mimicked with a home-brewed leader.  A 9' leader will typically have 24" of tippet at its end.  To extend the life of the leader, additional tippet material is generally added to the leader's end; the amount varies depending on the fishing circumstances.  In the past, I have always joined the tippet material to the leader using a Bloodknot ( or a Surgeon's knot if the two line diameters are different ).  Eventually the added tippet material will be consumed by changing flies, and I have to re-extend the leader with more tippet. After several re-extensions, I will have eaten through the original 24" of tippet and begin entering the tapered section of the leader.  This is bad for two reasons: 1) Joining lines of different diameter yields inherently weaker knots (at least for Surgeon's and Blood knots).  2) The leader will be shorter and less tapered causing poor loop turnover.  Eventually, it will have to be replaced.

An alternative approach is described in "Lefty Kreh's Ultimate Guide to Fly Fishing: Everything Anglers Need to Know by the World's Foremost Fly-Fishing Expert".  In this book, Lefty suggests joining the leader and tippet using a square knot formed by two non slip mono loops (Kreh knots), one in the leader and one in the tippet.  Using this approach, tippet material can be added (or removed) from the leader without shortening it.  In addition to extending the life of the leader this has several advantages: 1) The non slip mono loop is an incredibly strong knot, testing at nearly 100% line strength. 2) It is much easier to swap out tippets for a particular fly or fishing situation. 3)  Non slip mono loops can be pre-tied on tippet spools which allows tippet to be rapidly attached in the field with no additional knot tying.  The only downside I have thought of with this approach is if there is heavy vegetation the loop to loop connection may be more prone to snag or collect plant material; however, my initial tests of fishing with this connection on water with vegetation suggests this is not a problem.