76 FISHING KITS AND EQUIPMENT 



can only be taken upon flies with tea color snells and 

 Sneck hooks, used on tea color leaders. Love or money 

 cannot obtain from him a natural gut leader, a fly tied 

 on a natural gut snell, or a Sproat hook. And there 

 you are. 



Making rods and tying flies are attempted by only 



a few anglers, comparatively speaking, and success in 



these things only crowns the efforts of 



How to those who have considerable mechanical 

 Leader skill- But tying a leader is another 

 thing. It is so simple and, moreover, 

 saves so much expense and has so many advantages 

 in other ways, that every angler not only can, but by 

 all means should, tie his own leaders. A very great 

 advantage of the homemade leader is that you can tie 

 in the dropper loops just where you want them. And 

 you should know how to tie a leader, anyway, be- 

 cause then you can make over a " tailor made " leader 

 to suit yourself; or, if you accidentally break a leader 

 when fishing, or break one in testing it, you can make 

 the necessary repairs. 



Briefly and the following is incorporated here 

 because I know of no place where the story is told 

 briefly the first thing to do is to get a hank of gut 

 from the dealer. They come generally 100 strands to 

 the hank, and, as above stated, from 10 to 15 inches in 

 length. The 1 2-inch is a good length. Select six or 

 seven strands according to the length of leader de- 

 sired, a five-foot leader will do for two flies, six feet 



