ON The Fly with hand tied leaders.

Tying up some tapered trout leaders using Umpqua material...9' for 5x allows a 5 or 6x tippet to be added.  I prefer hand tied leaders on weed/algae free waters, blood knotted to a 2 ' section of hard mono butt section.  This butt is nail knotted to the fly line.  NO loop to loop!  There are many formulas for different types of leaders found on-line.  I use a desktop tool for fast and smooth blood knots, available from Cabela's.

I like to use flouro for tippet material, Varivas if I can find it, or recently I've used Frog Hair.  I'm always amazed observing fly fisherman using NO tippet or a much too short leader when dry fly fishing. I like a long tippet especially in tricky current situations as found on the Farmington.  A butt section transitions the leader and fly line nicely...in my opinion much better than loop to loop.