Fly Fishing Tippet Material

“Proven pick up lines that won’t fail, don’t stretch the truth and make tying the knot easy … “

 

 

We carry a full line of Fly Fishing Tippet Material to suit all your needs  in both mono and fluorocarbon. See bellow for a detailed listing of the brands we inventory.

 

The easiest way to think about tippet is to think of it simply as an “adjustment” to the tapered leader, when and if you need it. In other words, if your tapered leader is too short, you can just add a bit of tippet to give it more length. If your tapered leader is to fat and you think it might spook the fish, you can add a thinner piece of tippet to make it less visible.

 

Here’re some examples of when you will want to use Fly Fishing Tippet Material. Say you are using a 7 1/2′ 4X tapered leader and you think it’s too short. You can add a couple of feet of 4X tippet to make it longer. Or maybe you’re using a 7 1/2′ 4X tapered leader and you think it’s too thick and is scaring the fish. Here, you can add a couple of feet of 5X to make it less visible.

 

Finally, say you’re using a 7 1/2′ tapered leader, broke off a fly, put on a new fly, cut it off and change to another fly and so on. Well, sooner or later you won’t have a 7 1/2′ 4X tapered leader anymore. It’ll more like a 5′ 2X leader which will be too short and stiff to use for fishing. Again, you can add a bit of tippet to make it effective for your situation. In the last case, you might even add a couple of feet of 3X and a couple more of 4X and you’re back in business.

 

You could, of course, just keep throwing away tapered leaders and using new ones when they get too short, but that can be both expensive and wasteful. Once you get a bit of time on the water, all of this will be much clearer to you.

 

What does all this 4X, 5X mean?

 

Different strengths, different diameters and different breaking strains

 

The X system is a hangover from Victorian/Edwardian fishing days and refers to the number of times a piece of gut is pulled through a hole in a metal grid to make it thinner. Lucklily we do not use cat gut but it is still used as a unit of measure. Unfortunately the strengths of different manufacturers lines are all different.

 

Choosing the right tippet for your fly shouldn’t be determined by lb. test.  It is best determined by the diameter of the tippet.  You don’t have to carry a pocket calculator with you to figure out which size tippet to use, if you follow a few simple rules.

 

     Let’s start with leader basics.  The Fly Fishing Tippet Material is the business end of the leader.  This is the end you attach your fly to.  A tippet is given an “X” number which is determined by its diameter, such as 1X, 2X, 3X, etc.  This number, which is in thousandths, is easy to decipher using a simple formula:  11 – X = DIAMETER.

 

Size	Tippet Diameter (mm)	Tippet Diameter (inch)
0X	0.279	0.011
1X	0.254	0.010
2X	0.229	0.009
3X	0.203	0.008
4X	0.178	0.007
5X	0.152	0.006
6X	0.127	0.005
7X	0.102	0.004

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