MidCurrent Tested and Trusted: Airflo Polyleaders

There are times when you suddenly have to get down and dirty. I’m not talking about using a heavy-weighted, dumbbell-eyed monster of a bug that sinks like a rock and practically dredges the bottom. I’m talking about those moments when you need your fly to swim just a little deeper. It usually happens when you’re using small streamers in shallow water, or when you’re swinging soft-hackles, or just any other time that the fish aren’t rising and all you have is a floating line.

A lot of anglers have a back-up sink tip or full sink line for these situations. But on occasion—like when you’ve hooked a small rainbow on a dry fly and it’s suddenly eaten by a big brown—you need to switch out your fly and get deeper fast. That’s where polyleaders come in. Polyleaders are long, five feet to 12 feet, condensed weighted leaders that allow you to sink your flies a few inches to several feet on a floating line. While there are a lot of these types of leaders on the market, no other brand offers the durability, simplicity, or sheer variety of the Airflo polyleader collection.

Tougher than They Need to Be

Over the years I’ve gone through different polyleaders brands, usually with the same results. After a few days of hard fishing—stretched out on snags or by big fish and dragged over rocks and sticks along the bottom—the coating of the leader disintegrates or worse, the leader breaks. The Airflo Polyleaders never seem to even get nicked or scraped no matter what sort of hell I put them through.

The Airflo polyleaders secret to their durability is their coating. Made of a thick, plastic polymer wrapped around a heavy monofilament core, Airflo’s coating  holds up to years of punishment. This is fantastic for thrifty anglers like me who don’t switch out their leaders for a new one until they’re practically falling apart. I’ve used the same Airflo polyleaders for multiple seasons now, switching them on and off from my leader wallet and have yet to find a single serious cut or scrape in any of the coatings. They just seem to last forever.

A Leader for Every Situation

One irritation about polyleaders in the past is that I can’t always find the perfect one for whatever I’m doing. Either the leader is too long and needs to be cut down or they’re too short and cause my flies to hang vertically when I need them to swim straight and true. They are also usually too heavy or too light for the different fishing situations I find myself in. Airflo polyleaders come in a great variety of lengths and sink rates that cover anything I may need.

The Clear Floating leaders are great for mousing or for skating big caddis across the surface of the water. The Clear Hover has a half inch sink rate and is ideal for swinging soft hackles or small streamers just beneath the surface. And the Clear Intermediate with a one and a half inch sink rate works well for the same situations when the fish are concentrating and feeding a bit deeper in the water column. The heavier Slow Sink to Extra Fast sink leaders have sink rates from two inches to seven inches per second and work incredibly well for both swinging and stripping streamers either a few feet down or right along the bottom.

Each leader comes in a range of sizes from five feet to 10 feet long, meaning I can always find the length I’m looking for as well. When you have the whole collection of Airflo polyleaders in your leader wallet or sling pack, you can quickly and easily switch them out to adapt to whatever fishing situation you need.

Following the Leader

Polyleaders are a fantastic tool because they allow you to make small adjustments to your presentation without completely swapping  out your set up. If you feel like you’re swinging a fly too shallow or keep getting confused by whether the tug on the end of your line is a hard strike or just another snag, you can simply swap out your polyleader and get back on the right track. In short, with the entire line of Airflo polyleaders at your disposal, you can always be ready and fish with the confidence of an angler who knows they always have the right leader for the job.