Show us your silk gut leaders
Moderators: czkid, Whitefish Press
-
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 2381
- Joined: 01/22/17 17:05
- Location: Utah
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#21Wow, that is one big gut that you have there Roycesterns, um, I mean big pile of gut ;-)
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#22I've only picked up a few- the card on the right has has 12 removed, 6 leaders remain. The back of the leader pack say W&M Denver - the other boxed leaders are from Elmira Arms, I was in their store a couple times as a kid, they still exist but moved to PA after the "safe" act.
"It is better to tie one good fly in an hour than a dozen that would only be taken by a trout with a sense of humor"
Uncle Bill
Uncle Bill
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#23Hi Guys, I have a variety, but I still have a partial box of 9 foot, 3X Paul Young leaders, though I have given most away.
Jay Edwards
Jay Edwards
-
- Member
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 05/02/20 17:02
- Location: Springfield, Vt
-
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 1291
- Joined: 08/20/08 18:00
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#26Wow, lots to learn on these posts. Were the leaders knotted in one-foot increments? I heard they wouldn't stretch much further than a foot.
- Seabowisha Salmo T
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 1330
- Joined: 01/15/07 19:00
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#27hello; actually, if the angler was wise the leader(s) with fly(s) attached were wrapped around his hat and only needed a short resoak to be ready for casting. i did this for years till the last one i had broke or was treed.roycestearns wrote: ↑04/16/20 21:44Did you mean "Got gut?" / I'm not gutless.
Reproducing early American flies required gut, so I gobbled up any available for snells and twisted gut eyes.
The gut in front is what the tackle houses received when they ordered gut to make snells and leaders and flies.
I've fished it and it works good. The question I always had was, what kind of patience was required when the angler arrived at his spot, with fish rising, he had to untangle his soaking leader apply point and dropper flies, and then wait while his snells or gutted eyes soaked, before making his first cast. If he was not patient enough the first cast would snap off one or two flies.
regards, jim w
- Seabowisha Salmo T
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 1330
- Joined: 01/15/07 19:00
- Seabowisha Salmo T
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 1330
- Joined: 01/15/07 19:00
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#29hello; i also seem to remember, too lazy to look it up, that the "spanish" gut leader material was actually cut from pig or sheep intestines and run through sizing dies similar to wire making process. ymmv.dshx wrote: ↑03/30/20 22:07I always loved the description of the process by which the gut leaders were made (from a quoted text in an AMFF journal - sorry, don’t recall the original source):
"Their first step is to free the gut from such portions of the ruptured envelope as may adhere to it. Formerly this was done by drawing the gut between the teeth, and thus stripping off this refuse, but chemical processes are said now largely to have superseded this. The eyewitness, to whom I am indebted for this information, describes the old method as a most disgusting spectacle. The rows of women and girls drawing the entrails of this caterpillar through their teeth, their mouths smeared with blood from the cuts inflicted by the thin gut, mingled with the offal scraped from it by their teeth — spitting and drawing, and spitting again — must indeed be far from a pleasant sight."
-Dwight
regards, jim w
- roycestearns
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 1826
- Joined: 06/10/08 18:00
Re: Show us your silk gut leaders
#30Sheep or pig gut is what natural sausage casing is made from. Silk gut leaders are made from the silk production gut of the silk worm caterpillar, bombyx mori. Bombxy mori, produced the silk for the thread that was used to wrap the rods and tie the flies. We owe a lot to a Caterpillar!
Some gut can reach about 18 inches in length, but that's about the max. Japan introduced a knot less silk leader which is not gut but silk thread in a varnish.
Some gut can reach about 18 inches in length, but that's about the max. Japan introduced a knot less silk leader which is not gut but silk thread in a varnish.
-
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 2381
- Joined: 01/22/17 17:05
- Location: Utah
- Seabowisha Salmo T
- Bamboo Fanatic
- Posts: 1330
- Joined: 01/15/07 19:00