Since I'm a relative newbie, allow me to fullfill my duty as relative
newbie and ask a dumb question.

Recently I was fishing a warm water stream for smallmouth and I was
using a little split shot about 8" up from the fly on the tippet, and I
found after a while, I got a nasty tangle in my tippet around the split
shot. It was like a wind knot but worse? How does everyone avoid nasty
wind knots when using split shot? Or is it just a fact of life, and the
reason we carry extra spools of tippet?

thanks
-Ethan

salmobytes wrote:

3) Split shot 12-24" up the leader allows the nymph
to drift naturally,


A solution:
Stick with the *extra-short* leader, but put it on a dry line.
Put an extra-big, pea-sized split shot at the junction
of the end of the fly line and the leader butt. It's not a
perfect solution.