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I've made my leaders since I started fly fishing as I couldn't afford to buy them, Harvey's formula and others being used and use whatever formula fits the fishing needs...but the oddest one that I have used was for a "no turnover", i.e. almost a dumpcast of the leader where the leader would pile up almost on top of the fly....an old timer in the SMNP taught me the leader and the style of fishing that he used for those small streams in western edge of the park, Forney Creek, Nathan Creek, Deep Creek etc that always had these small pockets of eddies, slack water, and spot holding areas that the fish just sat in...he said that he didn't want turnover as the bigger fish wanted a very long time "no motion drift" fly presented to them before they would move on the fly...so he used a 9' three section leader that was built from 3 foot lengths of 1x, 3X, and 5X material, all connected with loop to loop connections and the same flies, a size 14 Thunderhead or a Yellerhammer...it was amazing at how it killed the energy transfer and dumped the leader right where the end of the line hit....so you could use an overpowered cast to get in under rhodies and such but still not have the fly get cast too far and not get caught by the micro currents.....the main current would just take the slack line and the leader slack and take it downstream, all the while the fly would just sit there waiting for the slack to be taken out...the fish would sit there and watch it and after 5 seconds or so, then they would come up and take the fly....hard to believe if I hadn't seen him take so many fish that way, and it worked perfectly for the side eddies of the plunge pool at the head of a pool as he would sidearm cast the line in the fast water, the leader and fly in the eddy slack water, and let the mess sit there in the eddy as the line went downstream. He also had a very effective "figure 8 cast" where he would take the rod tip and make a big sideways 8 in front of him and then dump the cast at the downstroke, making any rhodie catching backcast unnecessary, kind of an tip cast air roll so to speak, like a "snake cast" in spey language...he also had an "air mend" where he would dance the line in the air with vertical flips of the line, holding a fly motionless under it, with no line or leader on the water, all this needing a totally limp leader...anyway, he did everything not by the book, never turning over his fly, and caught a lot of big fish...after taking the time to learn it, I started catching bigger fish and found out that the Smokie's reputation for just small fish was a bit undeserved, they just have been selectively harvested to wait it out....a NC guide by the name of Mack Brown wrote a book about this titled "Casting Angles" which he self published and sold out of his house in the 90's...very interesting premise and one that works for special occasions...dj