5 February 2012

Leader to Hand- Jeremy Lucas pushes the presentation envelope

I fished with Jeremy last year September in Poland and again in November on his home water the Cumbrian Eden. Jeremy is thoroughly engrossed in perfecting fly presentation. I really enjoy spending time with people that are fanatical about an aspect of flyfishing... they're never boring and you usually learn an immense amount about a specific subject far quicker than if you occasionally thought about that corner of the sport by yourself, from time to time.

When we fished the Eden together the river was very high and pretty discoloured, not great for fishing, so we spent the few hours of afternoon light standing in the river messing about with Jeremy's Leader to Hand  technique. Jeremy has worked with recent developments in leader design, such as the French nymphing concepts, to develop 30 foot leader that casts like a light flyline and provides for drag free drifts you won't believe possible.

Jeremy explains in detail here and you can visit his site here. I shot a quick video of Jeremy working his leader system, it's not easy to film this in a way that clearly shows the leader, but isn't that the point? It's thin, near invisible, light as a feather and effortless to cast. Note that in most of the drifts he is achieving more than 30 feet in drag free drift and in the last drift he mends upstream to extend the drift below him totalling over 60 feet of drag free drift! Yes, I was there and achieved it myself... you need to try this.



I think this might be the catalyst for the next major evolution in flyline design...