casting with twisted leaders

[GIANTTREVALLY]

Im going to give twisted leaders a try. When getting ready to cast should the twisted leader abright be outside of the rod tip or should the abright just be outside of the reel when casting? can you get a good casting distance with twisted leaders.

[Angus Hulme]

G'day Marnie,

I am by no means an expert, but I think the generally accepted method for attaching your twisted leader to the main braided line is to use a loop-to-loop connection (do a search on the forum for instructions), which means you have to tie a bimini double in the main line. Personally, I only double about 30cm of the braid, and have never had any issues with that opening up during the cast and catching on a guide.

Regarding length, my twisted leaders are normally about 2 or 2.5 metres long, so I find that when rigged and ready to cast, the join of the leader is about 30cm away from my casting finger. Seems to work for me, and never had it fail, but others may do things differently.

I'm pretty sure a lot of the gurus have gone off twisted leaders in favour of heavy mono leaders joined with FG or PR knots, but seeing as I am defintely not a guru, I'll let them tell you about that. 

Cheers
Angus

[Brandon Khoo]

As Angus wrote, the best connection is to have a loop in the braid like that formed by a bimimi double. It pays to tie as small a loop as possible though to reduce the likelihood that the loop catches around your stripper guide.

Absolutely nothing wrong with twisted leaders - they cast fine although as Angus pointed out, many have migrated to single strand leaders using friction knots.

[Andrew Poulos]

I run twisted leaders that are long enough to make a wrap on the spool and dont have any issues unless using something like penn 10x which is quite stiff.