The Tackle You Need
Getting Deeper
Trout, bass, steelhead, and many other fish come to the surface for exciting moments of topwater feeding, but most of the time they skulk deep, not feeding, or feeding only occasionally on food items that come to them. Using a floating line is a pleasure, but if you want to catch fish regularly, you need to get down to them. In fly fishing, there are two general ways to do this You can either use your floating line with a long leader and attach weight (split-shot usually) near the fly end of the leader, or you can use a sinking line and allow the weight of the line to sink the fly to the fish.
In shallow water up to 2 or 3 feet deep, a floating line with a weighted fly,or a fly and split-shot attached 6 to 12 inches above it, works fine for both dead-drifted and swimming flies.
In moving water from 3 to 6 feet deep you can effectively probe the bottom by dead-drifting flies with a weighted nymph rig (see page 57). At this depth in moving water, streamers and other swimming flies tend to ride up too high in the water column unless you use an unwieldy amount of split-shot. An alternative is to use a sinking or sinking-tip line.
As mentioned previously, sinking lines have tungsten powder in the line coating which makes them denser than water. (Sinking lines originally contained lead powder but tungsten is heavier and less toxic.)
Sinking lines fall through the water column at different rates, from intermediate 1.25 to 1.75 inches per sec-ond (ips) to fast-sinking 4.5 to 6 ips. Extremely fast-sinking lines sink as fast as from 7 to 10 ips.
Some sinking lines are marketed by their grain weight—300-grain, 400-grain, etc.—but don’t be fooled by the weight of the fly line. Grain weight helps you match the line to the rod but the grain weight isn’t what makes fly lines sink—there are 750-grain floating lines out there. It’s the density of the fly line that causes it to sink, so match the grain weight to your rod weight (see chart on page 10) and match the sink rate (in inches per second) to your fishing situation.
Full-sink-ing lines are best suited to fishing in stillwaters (lakes and ponds). They are designed to get flies down to the level where the fish are feeding, which could be 1 foot under the surface or 60 feet under. When you are fish-ing over sandy shallows 1 to 3 feet deep, you may want to use an intermediate line to keep the fly where the fish are feeding while avoiding hanging up on the bottom. If the weather is extremely hot, and trout are holding in the cool depths of the lake, you’ll need a fast-sinking line to get down to them. An extremely fast-sinking line that sinks at 10 ips will take around 12 seconds to get the fly 10 feet deep, so you’ll have to use the countdown method Cast, then count to 12 to get the fly where you want it.
Lines that sink uniformly (evenly) or tip first are the best lines for fishing stillwaters. Because they sink in a straight line, they allow you to detect strikes easier and set the hook more efficiently.
Some sinking lines do not sink uniformly The middle sinks faster than the thin, less dense tip, creating a U-shaped belly that can cause you to miss strikes. When the fish takes the fly, the tension may take up some slack in the belly while the angler doesn’t feel anything.
Most modern full-sinking lines sink uniformly to provide a straight-line connection to the fly, allowing you to detect a high percentage of strikes and thus catch more fish.
Sinking Tips
Sinking-tip lines have a front sinking portion connected to a rear floating line. They are better in flowing water than full-sinking lines because you can mend and control the rear portion of the fly line while the tip continues to sink to the fish’s level. Sinking tips range from intermediate- to fast-sinking to bring the fly to the fish through a variety of both depths and currents.
Since it takes time for fly lines to sink, you’ll need a fast-sinking tip to get your fly down to the fish quickly in fast-moving water.
The length of the sinking portion determines not how quickly the line sinks, but the final depth of the fly. Because the line sinks at an angle from the base of the floating portion to the tip of the fly line, a longer sinking portion will ultimately get deeper. For instance, a 30-foot sinking-tip section that sinks at 5 ips will get your fly much deeper in the water column than a 10-foot sinking section with the same sink rate.
Sinking-tips are extremely important pieces of equipment for West Coast steelheaders who use them to swim flies slow and deep in the water column. Pacific salmon fall to the same strategies and no angler should visit British Columbia or Alaska without a full compliment of sinking-tip lines for 8- to 10-weight rods.
Striped bass fisherman who fish off jetties and in deep tidal rips also require fast-sinking-tip lines to reach the fish. Trout fishermen use them to “pound the banks” from drift boats, to fish streamers in deep holes, and billfish anglers use the weight of heavy sinking shooting-tapers to deliver extremely large flies quickly at short distances.
Cleaning Your Fly Line
Fly lines collect dirt, algae, and salt. A clean line floats higher, casts farther, mends more easily, and will last longer since things like dirt and salt are abrasive.
Fly lines should be cleaned regularly with warm water and a mild soap such as Ivory. Wipe the line with a soft cloth.
RIO sells a fly line dressing to coat the fly after you clean it. Cortland sells a Fly Line Cleaner Pad that does everything in one step. Scientific Anglers sells a line cleaning pad and line dressing package.
It was once popular to clean fly lines with automotive products such as Armor All or other cleaner/protectors, but fly line manufacturers tell us harsh soaps can dry and crack fly lines. Automotive products may make your line slicker immediately after treatment, but in the long run deplasticize the line, making it crack prematurely.
At the end of the fishing season clean all your lines and wind them back onto their original line spools or store them in loose coils. Always store your lines out of direct sunlight. Ultraviolet light and high heat (a hot car trunk, for instance) can cause the line coating to deteriorate swiftly. With proper care your lines should last from three to five years under normal use. Anglers who fish more than 100 days per year may replace their primary lines annually to get maximum performance.
Reels
In conventional fishing, the reel is an integral part of the casting process. In fly fishing the reel doesn’t play a role in casting, but it’s still an important piece of equipment. It needs to be sized and balanced correctly for the rod weight. A reel that is too large is heavy and awkward. A reel that is too small makes the rod tip feel heavy because there is no counterbalance. Manufacturers size their reels to certain line/rod weights, so be sure to get a reel that matches your rod.
A good trout reel can run from $50 up to $500. Lower-priced reels are cast Molten aluminum is poured into molds to form the reel spool and reel housing. More expensive reels are machined or sculpted from blocks of aircraft-grade aluminum. Machined reels have much more exacting tolerances—each piece fits together more closely—and machined pieces are by nature made from harder, more durable aluminum and can withstand more abuse.
Good reels are anodized, an electrolytic process that hardens the reel surface by increasing the depth of the oxide layer on the surface of the aluminum alloy. Anodized reels are corrosion resistant, and more durable.
Arbor size. The arbor is the spindle or shaft at the center of the reel. Some reels are advertised as “large-arbor” reels but hopefully what the manufacturer means is that the reel circumference, width, and the arbor are all larger to help you pick up line faster while reeling, and to store the line in looser coils. If you merely increase the arbor size and leave the reel diameter and width the same, you don’t have a functional large-arbor reel, you merely have reduced the reel capacity.
Drag type. All reels have drag—the mechanical function that controls and slows the line as it comes off the reel. This prevents backlash—not just when you are dealing with a large, long-running fish but also when you are pulling line off the reel by hand to prepare for casting. A smooth drag can also help protect fine tippets and small flies when you fight large trout. The simplest drag mechanism is click-and-pawl. It has been used in reels like the Hardy Perfect for more than 100 years and it still works well for most trout fishing.
Disk drags work more like the brakes on a car, where a pad rubs against a smooth surface to create friction. The surfaces can be metal, cork, Rulon, Teflon, carbon fiber, and several other types of materials. Disk drags are smoother than click-and-pawl devices, and can apply much more tension. They are required for saltwater fishing, or any fishing where the fish are strong and you need a mechanical advantage to wear the fish out. As a result, many trout fisherman also use a disk drag just in case they hook the big one.
Copyright © 2012 Intermedia Outdoors
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