[dustin]

Hey fellas - what's the shortest you would feel confident making your dacron-mono splice for a windon leader? Let's assume you're working with dacron of around 200 lb test, 400 to 500+ lb mono (2.0 to 2.5 mil) and making a double dacron splice (two layers of dacron over the mono).

The reason I ask is yesterday I made up some windons with dacron sections that seemed a bit on the short side. I test all my windons by looping the loop over a fixed object, taking double wraps with a gloved hand and reefing on it. In practice, as wraps would only be taken below the splice, the splice only really needs to withstand an angler pulling on the fish with maximum force through the rod (hand on spool with double on reel), so if it is solid under the pressure of a double wrapped direct leader pull it should be fine. The shortest splice I tested yesterday had only around 8.5 inches of mono covering dacron and I tried my damndest to pull the leader out of the dacron (doubting such a short splice would hold together) but couldn't.