Umpqua Red Hot Tapered Leaders

Thursday, 31 July 2014 | Admin

These are probably the neatest fly fishing tapered leaders on the market, a 3 coloured leader that can guide your eye to the fly or act as a depth indicator when high sticking!

Tapered Leaders are the most important piece of tackle there is yet is is not thought about enough! So when Umpqua Feather Merchants launched one of the hottest fly fishing tippets we have ever seen we have been desperate for stock. We took our samples, played with it and loved the results. This is by far the most innovative Fly Tippet we have ever seen. My eyesight used to be fantastic, however as the hair gets grey my eyes get weaker and all too frequently I find I lose the fly as it tracks down the river or I miss bites due to missing subtle takes. Since fishing with the Red Hot Tapered Leader I have found I miss less fish and see more bites due to its innovative colouring of the butt section. However, this made us think how under-rated the most important piece of tackle a fly fisherman uses is! We all take it for granted however it is next to the fly more important than even our fly rod, reel or line. We spend a lot of money on high end rods yet do not stop often enough to look at our leaders. We do not always think about the colour of the water, for example is is peaty in which case Stroft ABR is more brown in colour or if fishing a river Stroft GTM is a more blue to transparent colour or standard Essential Fly transparent tapered leaders.

Umpqua Red Hot Tapered Leaders

This product was the one that made us really think about our tapered leaders, and general leader usage. Designed for lake and river fishing to track flies like a gun sight, dry flies can quickly be found by looking down the tapered leader like a gun sight. When czech nymphing I use the red section of the leader as a depth guage and the red section and milky butt section gives me perfect bite indication. 8.5lb and 6lb are perfect for lake fishing with larger rainbows and the 3.5lb and 5lb spot on for rivers. When needing a longer tapered leader I simply add heavy monofilament on the butt or Stroft on the tippet according to the water colour often making my tapered leaders 15 to 20 feet.

A neat trick for with these Umpqua Red Hot leaders and the Essential Fly transparent tapered leaders has been to use these on the reservoirs and lakes tying on my own droppers onto the 8.5lb 3x. It has helped both casting as I have the tapered leader to assist turnover without messing about measuring length of different size tipper material. I have found this superb for buzzer fishing or for example on lakes.

For river fishing I now use these leaders exclusively when nymphing or czech nymphing, the indication proving a great assistance. As Sandy said after he tested these leaders on Bishop's Run and Duncan's Pool's on the Welsh Dee - "This is really a superb bit of kit! I could pick up fish bites I had not been able to pick up previously in bubbly sections of water" he continued "Whenever I lost sight of my fly I looked down the milky section of leader and picked up the fly really quickly".