During the fourth quarter of yesterday’s fun outing, my nymphs were absolutely snagged on bottom structure about 20 yards downstream. I was standing amidst really strong current with white water all around me. It was one of those perilous wades.

So, I didn’t want to wade down and wade back up, as I almost had fallen in already a few times. I decided to pull on the leader. Then, it broke.

I was saddened to see that my carefully-built Euro leader had busted and most of my sighter was gone. I can live with losing nymphs and tippet rings, but it takes some time to build my tightline leader. I certainly couldn’t do it while standing in a torrent of a river.

Just then, I remembered that I had some extra mono in my leader wallet. I was able to recreate the sighter somewhat in a very rough way.  I didn’t have the Amnesia 10# that I needed, but I did have some 8# mono. So, with a quick blood knot, I built a sighter. It cast OK, not great, but it let me keep fishing.

The irony is that a month ago I almost cleaned out the extra mono from my leader wallet. I’ve never needed to rebuild a sighter on the fly. But, I forgot about to do so. And, I’m glad that I did.

This morning, I got up early and re-created my sighter. I put on blood knots every 2″ or so (the knots help the leader float when you grease it to “float the sighter” for shallow water). I also added to the leader wallet some bits of Sufix 17#, Amnesia 12#, and Amnesia 10#.

I pack light when I’m on the water for long periods, such as yesterday’s 12-hour outing. But, mono is cheap insurance. The stuff doesn’t weigh much at all. And, it let me keep fishing yesterday, which is always a good thing.