Choosing and Building the Right Euro Nymphing Leader

How to create basic and advanced euro nymphing leaders

By: Jack Arnot

Having the right leader for euro nymphing is one of the most important things an angler can create before stepping out onto the water. There are a million different leader combinations that can be matched with different fly lines and rods to give an angler the upper hand while fishing in competitions and recreational fishing. In this article, I want to expand on basic and advanced leader combinations for your next outing on the river.

Competition euro nymphing leaders have dramatically changed since I started my competitive career in 2014. When I first started on the USA Youth Fly Fishing Team it was very standard to fish 15 and 20 butt sections. These worked great for nymphing with heavy and medium-heavy bugs at short distances. What these leaders couldn’t do very well was single nymphing flies with 2.0mm tungsten beads and smaller flies at distance because of the sag the leader creates when it leaves the rod. Compared to today where I find myself fishing which tends to be 4x, 5x, and even 6x leaders, it is dramatically different than what we were doing years ago.

Typically with euro leaders in my fishing, I am always experimenting with what works best for the situation I am in. Very rarely do I have a leader that will fish dry dropper, single nymph, double nymph, and streamer fish for me all at the same time that meets my expectations. This being said, I would recommend keeping your mind open to changing and tweaking a leader on and off the water and not just fishing the same leader for the entire fishing season. I find in my fishing sometimes I am fishing a new leader every day or sometimes I will find something I like and roll with it for a couple of months. There is no “magic leader” but some leaders will outperform others on any given day and that’s why I change my leaders often.

Basic Leader Components

Let's start with the basics. Most simple euro leaders are crafted with 3 parts, a butt section, a midsection, and a sighter. By no means are all leaders made of three parts but for basic leaders, I have used and seen this is the most common. These combinations can be a 15lb butt section to a 12lb pound midsection to a 3x sighter or whatever variation you choose they are endless… Where things start to change are the lengths to which you cut these materials and how you want that leader to react. Other leaders that are worth mentioning are level leaders. These are leaders that are made just out of one material the whole length until the sighter. Traditionally these can be a little challenging to start with, but I feel can offer great presentations.

Lengths

Depending on how you want your leader to perform can rely on how you tie different lengths of the butt section, midsection, and sighter for basic leaders. For example, if you lengthen the sighter past 3ft you can achieve a very slow arc with the flies when making casts for delicate presentations. Or making a midsection very short to fish an extremely overpowered tuck cast. All of these things can make a leader cast and drift differently.

When building a leader that isn’t a level leader I tie my butt sections around 9ft. I like the added length and tend to have these sections range from 8lb down to 4lb. Making too short of a butt section can have the cast to lose power and the flies will not cast in the desired direction. Anywhere from 7ft-11ft is a great starting point for most leaders.

For the middle sections of a leader, I will run fairly short sections around 3ft-5ft, and anywhere from 6lb-4lb, I like to think of this part as bridging the gap between the sighter and butt section. You don’t want your middle section to be 12lb connecting to a 5x or 4x sighter there will be a huge disconnect. It is best to have similar test lines connecting. Like an 8lb butt section, 6lb midsection, and 4x sighter.

Based on sighter lengths it all comes down to preference. I have seen people fish leaders with 1ft of a sighter and some with 10ft in competitions. A good starting point is anywhere from 2.5ft-5ft for most leaders. I have always fished around 5-6ft sighters up until a few months ago when I switched to shorter just based on the situations I was training for and ended up liking it. With longer sighters, they can be better equipped for larger rivers where longer drifts are required for controlling flies whereas shorter sighters can excel in pocket water where only short drifts are needed. As I mentioned before it is important to mess around with sighter lengths and diameters to see what works best for your style of fishing.

I do tie my leaders to fit within competition regulations but I will say that making any of these parts longer if desirable is never a bad idea.

Materials

The list can go on and on about what to make euro leaders out of but I will share my input on a few of my favorites. I have messed around with A LOT of different materials but a few stand out to me in particular.

One of the first ones being Maxia Chameleon used very widely in the competitive scene for many years. It has just the right amount of rigidity for casting nymphs but also a fair amount of suppleness for getting drag-free drifts. If you don’t know what to make a leader out of this should be the first item on your list. It also comes in a very stealthy brown/caramel color for great presentations.
One material I fished for a very long time that was introduced to me on the USA Youth Team was blue stren. I made leaders out of this material for a very long time. I don’t have a preference for whether it's mono or fluoro but I used the fluoro most of the time. It is much more supple than the maxima chameleon but still transfers energy very well. This stuff is fairly cheap and comes in all sorts of sizes. It can also combine very well with maxima as a mid-section on some leaders.
Some of the newer stuff I have used quite a bit of is the Sempe Spirit Indicator and Pierre Sempe Sighter/Indicator Nylon for building micro leaders. It has some in some more low-key colors that aren’t all meant for indicator sighters. This material has some great abrasion resistance and comes in all sorts of diameters.

Matching Rod and Leader

Matching the right leader to rod for euro nymphing is a problem that I think is massively overlooked when prepping. I have lots of leaders that do not perform well on a 3wt rather than a 2wt or leaders that fish better on a mid-flex 3wt rather than a more stiff 3wt. While some of this may be a little over the top everything matters when you are fishing in competition. Fine-tuning the right leader for the scenario can be the difference between a couple of fish.

In my competitive fishing and recreational fishing, I tend to fish 2wt and 3wt rods for euro nymphing. Right now I am currently using the Diamondback Ideal Nymph 10ft 2wt for fishing and it has been a perfect match for micro leaders and level leaders. I have tried to fish micro-level leaders on my Greys 10ft 3wt, which would be considered a mid-flex rod and I could not get the leader to perform the way I wanted it to. The Diamondback 2wt is what I would consider pretty stiff for a 2wt compared to others on the market. Which is great for accuracy, fighting larger fish, and turning over small nymphs. I have tested out a lot of 2wts and almost all of them have been floppy or not accurate enough for my fishing. With the Diamondback the rod performs the “hinge” very well with lighter flies. Level leaders in my opinion need to be paired with a rod that has less flex to provide the fly with power and proper turnover. Without this, the fly loses energy and it can become very difficult to cast.

I would explain this action as a mini tuck cast without the real effort of a tuck cast. Instead of a tapered euro leader throwing my fly at somewhat of an arc presentation, the Diamondback paired with a level leader or micro leader creates a mini tuck cast stopping my fly and dropping it vertically into the water with speed. Why is this important? I can fish smaller flies in smaller pockets with less effort and less drag, compared to a 3 or 4wt rod dragging that flies through the water with a heavy tapered leader.

With all this being said everyone has a system that works for them. The rod I choose to use for my fishing might not work how you like to fish. I try to keep a very open mind to pairing rods with leaders and seeing other techniques that work for other anglers.

Diamondback 10ft 2wt Ideal Nymph
Diamondback Fly Rods (Ideal Nymph)

Connections

There are many ways to connect a leader to a euro nymphing line but here are a few of my favorites; believe it or not this can dramatically affect how the leader casts and presents drifts. For starters, I will clip off the first couple inches of a euro line this includes the welded loop and sometimes the colored part that some manufacturers add on. I think this first portion of the line is pretty unnecessary and will add sag to the drift when the line comes out of the rod tip.

The first way to connect a line and leader is to chop off those first couple of inches, take the fly line and some micro fly tying thread, and make a mini welded loop yourself, fortified with super glue and UV glue. This method was shown to me back in 2016 by David Arcay and has been what I use in competitions since then. With a smaller loop, the leader can grab power from the fly line more efficiently and allows for less hinging of the leader compared to a welded loop. The most important part of this is the thread. I use semperfli nano thread in an 18/0 this will slightly cut into everything but the core of the line making it great for this connection. I tend to redo this loop just about every month when I am fishing a lot to prevent the line from cracking or if I see the UV glue starting to fade.

One of the next ways to connect the leader to the euro line is to insert the leader into the core of the fly line. This is only possible with braid cores and not mono cores. To start, you clip off the factory loop take a needle and insert it into the braid core about 1.5-2 inches. Flaring the braid core underneath the coating. Then you can clip the end of the butt section at an angle with nippers, coat it in super glue, and slide it into the line. This can take a bit of trial and error but it will make a seamless connection between line and leader with no knots.

Leader Formulas (competition regulation)

Basic Euro Leader