fly-fishing knots and leaders for pacific salmon and Sea-run cutthroat

[@KvichakSmith]

Good stuff. Thank you

[@dowmer3093]

Nice video Tim. Great info as a refresher or for the neophyte. I absolutely agree, tapered are not necessarily needed and in fact, many times, especially with steamers you want a shorter leader if fishing a sinking line. Making your own using reducing diameter leader material is like you said, much more economical and allows you the flexibility to adjust leaders to fit the fishing conditions. Brian Fleschig at Mad River Outfitters has been preaching this for years. Well done Tim.

[@timothybird7008]

Thanks for the feedback!

[@garrettmilam5933]

Thanks for the tips. I used to fish a braided leader from my local shop with a tippet ring for cutts but sadly he shut down recently and my last one gave up the ghost. Nice to have an alternative that is less costly and likely more durable than tapered leaders. I just tied up three of these today and will be hitting Kitsap this week. Hoping to hit the chum fry feed in one or more spots.

[@vinniebarbarino-1]

Great show thank you, i learnt a lot.

[@timothybird7008]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@danyul7116]

This is all great information. I fish the sound from the beach regularly and have found a lot of your videos extremely helpful. Your tutorial on Johnson’s Beach fly helped me tie a fly that caught me my largest SRC to date. I’ve been wanting to make my own leaders for a while now for a lot of the reasons you pointed out, but wasn’t exactly sure where to start. Is there much of a difference between Maxima and Seaguar?

[@timothybird7008]

Thanks for your comment, much appreciated. Maxima ultragreen has been my favorite mono for years, I'll bet their fluorocarbon is also good. I've got a one-shot spool of the 8lb, but haven't used it enough to compare with Seaguar.

[@paulobainz1210]

I just hate picking up fishers discarded packs of leaders. :)

[@aloh86]

Great video, Tim. Thank you. I've been interested in building my own leaders. This gives me a good start. I'm new to sea run cutthroat fishing in the salt. Now that we're nearing Oct. is sea run cutthroat fishing slowing down everywhere except the South Sound and maybe west North Sound (Hood Canal area)? I'm located in east north sound (Lynnwood/Everett area) and so far with the research I've done my understanding is that fall is the time the sea run cutthroat head into the rivers in my area (Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish).

[@timothybird7008]

I haven't fished in your location, so I can't speak from personal experience. From what I've read, though, I think you're correct about the timing around there. Where I mostly fish (North/Central Sound on the west side and particularly Hood Canal), September offers some of the best SRC fishing, and it continues to be good through October and well into November. Then it goes quiet until late February/early March. One big issue with many of the beaches I fish in September is that it's very tempting to fish for Coho, and even if specifically targeting SRC, you need to use quite heavy gear to cope with the inevitable Coho that feed on much the same natural food and will readily take the same flies.