How's this for a Good(ger) Leader Story...?
This is a 400lb wind-on leader.
It has caught three marlin, the very first being a 300+kg blue marlin that took a highly experienced angler and a good crew 2:20 to get to the boat.
Surprisingly, after a fish that big and a fight that long, the leader looked undamaged, and uncharacteristically, I left it on the rod and let it run a second and even a third time. On those two occasions after the first big marlin, it was on the receiving end of a combined additional total of 70 minutes of additional marlin action, catching a 150kg and a 120kg blue marlin.
After the third fish, this is what it looked like - its first hint of any stress. You can see one section of the mono has gone milky, a sure sign of extended tension, but that's nothing to worry too much about. The real damage has occurred at the binding where the dacron sleeve has started to slip off and pull away from the mono underneath. When these things go, my only experience is that the dacron slips and immediately pulls off the mono, and the marlin departs stage left trailing your favourite expensive skirted lure. This did happen once to me using a brand of wind-on that I won't mention, but which rhymes vaguely with Weetbix.. My biggest heartburn with that gear failure was not so much the loss of the marlin as the fact that the lure that went with it was one of my last MacGoos.
But I digress. . .
The leader in the photo was hand made in Australia - probably one of the last brands that is - and in addition to the usual over-binding of the black dacron (with black thread in this case), and the sealing of that binding with superglue or a similar goop, these wind-ons have a special backup under-binding that is designed to hold the leader together in the event the primary binding fails as has happened here.
Who knows when the primary binding on this leader actually started to fail. . . most likely after the first big fish, but I hadn't seen any signs of failure or even bill damage to the leader after that fish, so I left it out there for another two fish, the second of which obviously finished it off and caused the failure you see here, where the black dacron sleeve has pulled about 40mm along the mono . . . BUT . . . the white secondary binding did its job perfectly and limited the slippage and stopped the leader failing, allowing us to get the last fish to the boat and successfully tagged and released.
And yes, I know I wasn't too smart by continuing to use the leader after the very first fish, particularly given how big that marlin was, but it seemed like it was always ready for just one more fish, so I gave it two more runs, and it repaid my rash faith in it in spades.
A great many game fishermen who used to use wind-on leaders but had one fail will tell you they gave up using wind-ons forever, because one failure and fish loss was enough. You can't argue with that, and I can see their point of view entirely. However, I have a lot of relatively inexperienced anglers fish with me on Foreign Exchange at various times, and I continue to use wind-ons both for that reason, and the simple fact that I like them.
My one failure that I mentioned above certainly upset me at the time, but I changed the brand of leader I used immediately to the type you see above, and I couldn't be happier. They are superbly made with top quality materials, they work as they should, and are clearly able to take a huge amount of abuse and stress without suffering from catastrophic failure. It's hard to ask for more.
Oh . . . so what brand are they? "Goodger" that's what.
And no, they don't sponsor us, and they didn't even send me a single freebie when I sent them a congratulatory letter about this great leader, so this little story is as straight up as they come.
It has caught three marlin, the very first being a 300+kg blue marlin that took a highly experienced angler and a good crew 2:20 to get to the boat.
Surprisingly, after a fish that big and a fight that long, the leader looked undamaged, and uncharacteristically, I left it on the rod and let it run a second and even a third time. On those two occasions after the first big marlin, it was on the receiving end of a combined additional total of 70 minutes of additional marlin action, catching a 150kg and a 120kg blue marlin.
After the third fish, this is what it looked like - its first hint of any stress. You can see one section of the mono has gone milky, a sure sign of extended tension, but that's nothing to worry too much about. The real damage has occurred at the binding where the dacron sleeve has started to slip off and pull away from the mono underneath. When these things go, my only experience is that the dacron slips and immediately pulls off the mono, and the marlin departs stage left trailing your favourite expensive skirted lure. This did happen once to me using a brand of wind-on that I won't mention, but which rhymes vaguely with Weetbix.. My biggest heartburn with that gear failure was not so much the loss of the marlin as the fact that the lure that went with it was one of my last MacGoos.
But I digress. . .
The leader in the photo was hand made in Australia - probably one of the last brands that is - and in addition to the usual over-binding of the black dacron (with black thread in this case), and the sealing of that binding with superglue or a similar goop, these wind-ons have a special backup under-binding that is designed to hold the leader together in the event the primary binding fails as has happened here.
Who knows when the primary binding on this leader actually started to fail. . . most likely after the first big fish, but I hadn't seen any signs of failure or even bill damage to the leader after that fish, so I left it out there for another two fish, the second of which obviously finished it off and caused the failure you see here, where the black dacron sleeve has pulled about 40mm along the mono . . . BUT . . . the white secondary binding did its job perfectly and limited the slippage and stopped the leader failing, allowing us to get the last fish to the boat and successfully tagged and released.
And yes, I know I wasn't too smart by continuing to use the leader after the very first fish, particularly given how big that marlin was, but it seemed like it was always ready for just one more fish, so I gave it two more runs, and it repaid my rash faith in it in spades.
A great many game fishermen who used to use wind-on leaders but had one fail will tell you they gave up using wind-ons forever, because one failure and fish loss was enough. You can't argue with that, and I can see their point of view entirely. However, I have a lot of relatively inexperienced anglers fish with me on Foreign Exchange at various times, and I continue to use wind-ons both for that reason, and the simple fact that I like them.
My one failure that I mentioned above certainly upset me at the time, but I changed the brand of leader I used immediately to the type you see above, and I couldn't be happier. They are superbly made with top quality materials, they work as they should, and are clearly able to take a huge amount of abuse and stress without suffering from catastrophic failure. It's hard to ask for more.
Oh . . . so what brand are they? "Goodger" that's what.
And no, they don't sponsor us, and they didn't even send me a single freebie when I sent them a congratulatory letter about this great leader, so this little story is as straight up as they come.