Years ago, I used the Orvis Braided Leaders for nearly all of my fishing. But I eventually went away from using them because of the water droplet spray problems were scaring fish for me, which is also something of a problem with Furled leaders and Lines. Since then, Orvis has developed a water repelling treatment that eliminates the spray and it also allows the leaders so treated to float. The Braided Leaders are now available in the normal and floating versions, your choice. The Braided Leaders have sufficient turn over power to allow 4 to 8 foot tippets to be used, even with fairly wind resistant flies.

I just dug out some of those old leaders and cast them in the backyard, on a fairly breezy day, with my 12 foot Iwana rod today, back to back with a 10.5 foot Traditional Tenkara USA Line. They cast very nicely and with much more delicacy than my Furled T-USA Traditional Line does. I have not had a chance to fish them yet but I will just as soon as I can. They come in 7.5 and 9 foot lengths, with two Bimini-Twist Tippets included per leader. There is also something like 26 reviews posted that you can read if you are interested. You can loop-to-loop on additional tippets of your choice as needed with the Orvis Braided Leaders. Here is a link: http://www.orvis.com/store/product.aspx?pf_id=2A07&dir_id=758&group_id=10660&cat_id=5133&subcat_id=6014

One of the things that needs to be clarified here is the fact that the length of the tapered nylon braid is 3 feet shorter than the leader length being stated. Another thing is that the braid is gray in color, so high visibility is not an option with the Orvis braided Leaders.

At one time Airflow also offered braided leaders in floating and intermediate sink rates that were white or clear, depending on how you view such things, in color. One of the braided leaders I cast yesterday was one of those and it was in the longer length. They were available in light trout, trout and salmon weights -20, 25 & 30 pound breaking strength butts, as were the earlier Orvis Braided Leaders that are now topping out at a 7 weight line compatible butt section, in various appropriate lengths. Unfortunately, at least as far as I was able to determine, the Airflow braided leaders are no longer being made. Although you might be able to still find some around somewhere on a rack in a fly fishing shop. Here is a link for an alternative source of more visible braided leader butts at a much better price than what Orvis is charging for their Braided Leaders, but in a very limited quantity: http://www.ebay.com/itm/6ft-BRAIDED-fly-fishing-LEADER-Salmon-Bass-Pike-Big-Game-Taper-30lb-test-/270951876188

Here is another source for more visible Braided Leaders still being made today; unfortunately this is for wholesale to dealers firm setup, the minimum buy quantity is 50 leaders, so it is not for the average angler: http://factory.dhgate.com/fishing-lines/fly-fishing-line-braided-leader-p48137537.html The only reason I am posting this is in case Daniel, Chris or Jason might be interested in adding them to their product lines.

Braided Leaders have a loop in each end of the braided section. All one needs to do is loop the butt end to the fly line (or girth hitch to the lillian on a T-rod) and loop the other end to the Tippet (which is not braided). The same braided section will roll over a size 2 streamer or a size 20 dry; just change the tippet to match the fly.

Some Additional Information:

7 1/2' Length Braided Leader
Short (3-1/2 ft.) braided tapered butt section for 7-ft. leaders. Short length turns over easily. Fly stays close to line when using sinking lines. Accurate casting.

9' Length Braided Leader
Medium (5-ft.) braided tapered butt section for 9-ft. leaders. Good general length. Allows sinking flies to sink deeper, quicker.

12' Length Braided Leader
Long (8-ft.) braided tapered butt section for 12-ft. leaders. Good for longer dead drifts. Allows sinking flies to sink deeper, quicker.

Pros
Easy to use. They do it all—long casts, short casts; dry flies and emergers at the surface; nymphs, wets, and streamers scratching the bottom. Change from short to long leaders, sinking to fast sinking to floating leaders without tying anything harder than a loop. Available in a kit which contains spare loops for your line, mini-lead-heads, tippets and a wallet. Long life

Cons
Tend to spray water unless you buy the "filled" braid or unless you fill the braid with fly floatant.

Well, I fished the white braided leader line today and it was wonderful. After I got home I measured the braid, and it is 8 feet, 8 inches long on my line. I believe it was 9 feet long when I first got it as it was for a 12 foot long leader. I have a transition section of 3X that is 8 inches long in between the braid and the tippet, to which I looped on a 3 foot long 5X tippet for today's fishing, for a total line length of about 13 feet, which was fine for the size stream that I was fishing on this day. The reason the braid is shorter than 9 feet is because I replaced the loops on the leader with a more streamlined loop at the top and with a jam knot/uni knot at the tippet end for a finer than loop-to-loop transition section juncture.

The braided leader material is lighter in weight than the kevlar Traditional Tenkara USA Line material is, so it is a lot easier to hold up and off of the water for an equal length of line. The braided leader material has a stiffer hand to it than the kevlar line material does, so even though the braid is lighter in weight it is stiff enough to cast very well, even in the wind that I experienced on this day. It is easy to form tight or open casting loops, depending on how you handle your rod. And the braid does not sink the way the kevlar line material does. There is no memory problems with the braided leader material at all; no stretching is required and fluorocarbon transition and tippet sections cast like a dream when paired with the braided leader material.

Today I was holding most of the line up and off of the water while presenting dry flies, so the fact that I treated the braid with Dry Fly Magic floatant was not much of a consideration. However, the braid took the floatant very well. Orvis uses a dry, powdered floatant on their floating braided leaders. I have it on good authority that the Dry Fly Magic floatant acts as a good bonding agent for Frog's Fanny. If you feel you need a better floating Tenkara fly line, adding those two floatants to the braid should give you what you want and need. Treating the line with floatant eliminated the water droplet spray problems.

In checking on the availability of the Orvis Braided Leaders, I noticed that Orvis is now listing them as no longer available. So if you are interested in getting any of these leaders for Tenkara fly fishing, it would be best to make inquiries at or go to fly shops that handle Orvis products to see if they still have any of the Braided Leaders in stock, quickly. As mentioned earlier, Airflow is no longer offering the braided leaders for sale. Braided leaders are still being made and sold in Asia. Hopefully, some one will meet the need for we Tenkara fly fishers in the US and offer the braided nylon leader butts for sale here, as well.

Here is a link to some in stock Orvis Braided Leaders:http://www.bobmarriottsflyfishingstore.com/leaders/orvis/braided
I am sure that others firms may have them as well. If you need a longer line than the Braided Leaders provide, looping in a length of level fluorocarbon of your choice between the rod and the braided leader will allow you to extend these lines to what ever length you need in your fishing.

Well, the broken tip section replacements for my Amago rod were delivered Monday evening, so I went up to fish a hike into lake where I have done a lot of my fly pattern testing and fly pattern development over the years the next day, which was July 3rd. I was the first person to fish this little 3 acre lake this year, which is located at a modest 9,100 feet in elevation.

I Started by Fishing the Morning Midge Emergence:
I got into the lake before the sunlight was falling on the water, with the fish rising to a midge emergence, I fished the 8 foot + Airflow Braided Leader butt, with about a 4 foot 5X tippet, going through my Midge Pupa patterns in sizes 10, 12, 14 and 16. After 10 fish were released on a pattern, another pattern was tried. Colors included white, black, orange and blond or light yellow, with the Blond one getting its limit the fastest. This was the first time that I have fished for trout with midge pupa patterns on a Tenkara rod. I didn't bother to re-treat the Braided Leader Butt with floatant, so the braided material that was not being held up off of the water would slowly sink, but not fast enough to inter fear with keeping the midge pupa from ascending in the water with a twitching rod retrieve and being able to fish these sinking patterns close the surface. Trout do not usually move swiftly to take midge pupa patterns, and I was having some problems detecting strikes and hooking the fish ever so gently taking my flies, which undoubtedly resulted in many missed fish. But I am hoping to get better at fishing midge patterns on a Tenkara rod as I go along.

Fishing My Sheeps Creek Patterns:
As the temperature climbed with the full light of day falling on the water, the midges quit emerging and the brook trout quit hitting my midge pupa patterns, so I changed to a size 10 Black Sheeps Creek pattern, which is more or less a reverse-hackle (meaning that the hackle is placed at the bend of the hook instead of being placed nearer to the eye of the hook) Sakasa Kebari style fly. With all of my Sheeps Creek Patterns, including the Black, Orange and a variation on the Peacock Sheeps Creek with a blue hackle I was trying to get rid of, the fish took all of those flies with a lot more speed and force than they did with the midge pupa patterns. Again I changed patterns after the fly on my line had caught its 10 fish limit, with the exception of the blue hackle fly, which I had to shorten the hackle by half in order to get it to catch any fish at all, which resulted in 30 fish being caught on that pattern before my tippet finally broke at the fly. The braided leader butt performed as well as could be expected here also, even in doing sling shot casts where the timber was pushing me right to the water's edge with no back casting room to be had anywhere behind me in places.

Fishing My Terrestrial Patterns After the Wind Came Up:
Eventually the wind made it difficult to spot and stalk the fish I was casting to. Thermal afternoon winds tend to deposit a lot of terrestrial insects into mountain lakes on a nearly daily basis over the summer and well into the fall, so I put on an ant pattern. The fish took the ant on the surface with a lot more enthusiasm than thy had taken either the midge pupa or the Sheeps Creek patterns earlier, and it could not have taken more than 5 minuets for the size 12 foam ant pattern to catch its 10 fish limit. The Two-Tone Foam Beetle pattern also got its 10 fish limit, but it took about twice as long for it to do it as it did with the ant pattern. Buy this time I was fishing around the lake for the second time, catching some of the same fish again that I had caught earlier in the morning, which I could tell from the hook scars on their mouths. The High Country Hopper pattern produced its 10 fish limit the fastest, with me finishing out the day with my Foam Spider Pattern, which caught its 40th fish by the time I got back to where my pack was left. Normally the spider is not a good lake fly, but on this day it turned these normally shy fish into terrestrial fly pattern hogs. By the time I too that fly off of my line, there was only a few strands of the hackle left on the hook. The foam was ripped to shreds, the under body was chewed to peaces and the thread that holds the whole fly together was coming unwound. And yet the tattered pattern was still catching fish quite handily.

My Braided Leader Butt for Tenkara Lake Fly Fishing Conclusions:
The braided leader butt sure was not perfect for Tenkara fly fishing on this day. Casting into the wind, the bulky, more wind resistant foam terrestrial fly patterns was troublesome at times, with the wind doubling the tippet back toward the rod frequently once the wind got above a certain velocity. But all in all the braided leader butt did a pretty good job of presenting my fly patterns in most situations encountered on this day. This was with a total line length, including the tippet, of about 14 feet on a 13.5 foot long rod. That is not a very long line by anyone's standards. Were there fish I could not reach? You bet. But no matter how long a line you can cast, there will always be fish that are still out of reach. The braided leader butt and tippet ended up being about the same length as my rod, after making all the fly changes that I made over the day, but the line was still enough reach and effectively cover the 160 fish I released over the day, which amounted to 90 fish released on wet flies and another 70 fish released on dry flies over about 6 hours of fishing on a 3 acre lake. In my opinion, regardless of whether you are fishing lakes or streams, you do not need one and one half times the length of your Tenkara rod, or longer, lines in order to be able to catch a lot of fish. The water in this lake is gin-clear and the fish had to be approached with due stealth to be caught, and the gentle presentations the braided butt leader can make helps a lot in fooling the fish. Next, I plan to fish the Orvis Braided Butt Leader on a stream to see how well it does.

Well I did finally get around to fishing an Orvis Braided leader on a Tenkara rod. I believe it was a 3 through 5 Wt. line model, which had been shortened slightly. As it turns out the gray color of the braided material was not nearly as hard to see as I thought it would be. This turned out to be a rather windy day, and the braided material was only a little more than 5 feet long, so this leader lacked the weight and density needed to cast well with the wind resistant foam dry flies (sizes 13s through 16s) that I was fishing on that day. However, I believe a heavier line rated Braided Leader would have done a better job of presenting those same flies in that wind.

Comparing Braided Leaders to either tapered or level fluorocarbon lines, the braided material is much lighter in weight and it glides out over the water in a slow relaxed way, casting with the Braided Leaders just brings a big smile to my face, your millage may vary on that account though. The FC lines are rockets by comparison, requiring a lot faster casting tempo, with much more abrupt starts and stops needed to get the right results, but the FC lines will sure do a lot better in any substantial wind than the braided material can unless it has lead inserted into its hollow braid, sinking Braided Leaders have been and are being made. So if you need to make gentle presentations to super spooky fish on calm days, the Braided Leaders may find a place to reside in your Tenkara angling kit, especially if you want or need a line that does or can be made to float, or if you just enjoy a slow, relaxed casting style.

I believe a brief few words of explanation are in order about my desire for a floating Tenkara fly line. On the high lakes I find that the best available dry fly fishing often occurs in the afternoons, with the rise of the up-slope thermal winds and the resulting depositions of terrestrial insects that those winds provide for the trout living in those lakes. And when it is windy, holding your Tenkara line up off of the water is not a practical fishing technique because your line and fly will get blown all over the place, creating fly drag on the water you are fishing. The sinking lines presently available will eventually pull your floating fly under the water, creating another kind of drag or unnatural movement in the fly that the fish will readily detect as being unnatural and refuse to take. A floating line can be cast into the wind and allowed to drift on the wind generated water currents, along with the fly pattern, back toward the angler in the most natural way possible that the fish will accept, often with great enthusiasm. Hence, my desire for a floating Tenkara fly line. I just happened upon this information on a Floating Tapered Tenkara Fly Line; here is the link: http://fishrigs.com/rigs-blog/floating-tenkara-line-with-hi-viz/ and: http://fishrigs.com/products-page/hand-tied-tenkara-line-with-hi-viz/floating-tenkara-line-with-hi-viz/