Sorry about the flipped image.
So i promised to post results with my crimped salmon leaders. In a word, very impressed.
in the pic you can see that i used Rio level T welding tubing for the chafe gear, which is normally used for spey fishing. After trying some other stuff from ebay and some other off shore tubing i revisited this stuff, as it is designed to be used on fishing line. I was concerned about dissimilar plastics reacting with each other with the offshore stuff. Basically this stuff is shrink tubing; i insert the line thru the crimp, and then melt a one inch piece of the tubing onto the tag end. i do this on the tag so as not do damage the usable portion of the leader. I then slide the shrunken piece of tubing in place to my desired leader length and then crimp.
the crimps are Jinkai "k" size that I am using with 40 Berkeley Pro-Spec fluorocarbon line.
As far as performance i have been using the same flasher/ leader / hootchie all spring. When done for the day i have been wrapping the leader around the flasher, and storing it underwater in a tupperware container filled with fresh water. I have landed several large springs with no problems, as well as long distance released a quite a few.
One major issue is the dick-around factor. this is something you do in the winter time or the nite before. this isn't something you wanna do in your boat when there is a hot bite on. Fluoro is super abrasive resistant but dogfish are dogfish, and they flat out mess things up. if you get a line abrasion, the leader is pretty much toast for the morning so you'd better have several tied up. Additionally, if you find you may need longer leaders, well you are pretty much hooped. This is where the cheapness and ease of knot tying mono just flat out kick butt.
You could also hate your hootchie choice and it's not like you can easily pull it off this leader . Basically i am pre-tying up some classics like glo-whites, army trucks, green splatterbacks etc. and will leave them as is.
All things considered I like this method, i'll keep running it for now.
