[Video] How-to Make a European Nymphing Coiled Mono Sighter

November 19, 2009

This quick video tutorial shows you how to build a coiled mono sighter used in place of a strike indicator when fly fishing with nymphs.

Used in several European nymphing methods, including French Nymphing and Spanish nymphing techniques, a coiled mono sighter greatly increases strike detection.

Contents

What’s a Sighter
How-to Make a Coiled Mono Sighter
How-to Rig a Coiled Sighter
Give It A Try!
The Beat Goes On

What’s a Sighter

The concept of a sighter was introduced in our last post on how to build a French / Spanish nymphing leader where we introduced two types of sighters including a coiled mono sighter and a backing sighter.

How-to Make a Coiled Mono Sighter

Making a coiled mono sighter is very easy. There are 3 basic steps:

1. Wrap hard monofilament around a cylindrical shaped object
2. Boiled for 5-minutes
3. Freeze

The heating and cooling cycle sets a coil into the monofilament resulting in what looks like a spring made from monofilament. Watch the video for more details.

How-to Rig a Coiled Sighter

When French nymphing or Spanish nymphing the coiled sighter is typically tied in about midway down the leader. I prefer loop-to-loop connections for ease of use. Alternatively, you might use a Davy Wotton Leader Knot to attach the upper end of the sighter to the butt section of the leader and use a loop-to-loop connection between the sighter and tippet section.

Give It A Try!

You may garner a few strange looks when you whip out your coiled mono sighter stream side and even a few giggles as you begin to fling this thing about. But trust me; the laughing will stop when you start out fishing everyone on the stream!

I guarantee you will be amazed, that is if you are willing to give it a try.

The Beat Goes On

We’re in the home stretch of our European nymphing tutorial . Next up we’ll take a look at how to build a backing sighter and then we’ll finish out the series with a European nymphing fly rod review – yee haw!

Now stop reading this and go boil some mono!