Fly and meathead leader length

[overthelimit]

Do you guys run the same leader length between your spin docs and paddles for flies and meat rigs? Looking to pick up a few paddles for this year and was just curious about leader length.

[bondouley]

Do you guys run the same leader length between your spin docs and paddles for flies and meat rigs? Looking to pick up a few paddles for this year and was just curious about leader length.

many variables to this question but basically no our leader length between flies and paddles are from 24 to 35 inches depending on weather conditions and mood of the fish.  For meat we like to run 48 inches if we are using a rig with twinkies.  If we are running just a clean head and meat behind a paddle we will stretch that out to 60 inches.  This is basically our starting point for our meat program and we will adjust from there    Good luck i hope this helps 

[TyeeTanic]

No. Generally it's a shorter leader for flies and longer for meat heads.

 

Reason is flies do not impose any action on their own, so you rely on the SD to create the action.  Whereas, meat heads spin (about 1 to 2 turns per second is optimal).

 

Some guys use as short as 48" to meatheads and others 72". 

 

For a fly, a good rule is 3x the lenght of the flasher, so an 11" paddle would get a 33" leader, and a 8" paddle around a 24" leader.  I typically run mine around 32".

Edited April 7, 2016 by TyeeTanic

[overthelimit]

Right now all I have is 8" spinny's. My arsenal is pretty limited. I picked up a couple bait heads and mc rockets. Should I tie up some different leader lengths? 36, 40, 44, 48"?

[TyeeTanic]

For meat heads, definitely nothing under 48" leader length.  I'd tie some up at 48", and then up to 72" (not sure how long your rod is, but if you can get away with 72" I'd do it.

[overthelimit]

Ok. Thanks. Probably keep on the shorter side as I fish solo quite a bit.

Ok with 8" spinny's or better off with paddles? Should I snag a few 11" paddles?

[Nautitroller]

Just to throw a curve in sometimes on the finger lakes I run a very short 14-18" leader and it out fishes everything! Just gotta see what they want.

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[bondouley]

Yes 8 inch spinnys will be a good starting point. We run them with twinkies and use clean meat heads behind echip paddles. Don't try to over think it just start with the basics and you will learn to dial it in from there.

[bondouley]

These are our go to meat rigs and paddles that we start with just about every time that we run a meat program. If these don't take fish we will try changing colors or that's when we will go to the bigger paddles.

[DJ 17]

With the MC Rockets try running them clean on a 48" leader behind an 8" spinny

[alex1young]

Really good information here!

[overthelimit]

Thanks guys. Very helpful as always.