Fly Fishing Gear

In order to effectively throw a near-weightless fly, fly fishing is really the art of throwing a weighted line onto the water, and really, anything that’s attached to the end of the fly line, within reason, should follow. Think of your fly rod as a stick. If you hold the bottom of a stick, the top of the stick is sticking out. If you tie a piece of string to the stick, then position the stick above your shoulder, and begin short strokes, keeping the tip of the stick up in the air, the string will follow the tip of the stick, until you stop moving the stick. The moment you start the stroke is called the moment of inertia, it’s when you give some energy to your apparatus.

The Proper Grip For Accurate Casting

While you’re waiting for the class to begin, try this at home: Grasp a pencil or pen in your hand. To get the right grip, you’ll want to have your palm up, facing your eyes, so you can see as you grasp the pen or pencil. Let the pen/pencil fall into the fold behind the first knuckle, closest to the hand.

When I began to fly fish, I was told that the fly reel was basically a place where the line was stored, and kept out of the way. Most of the time, when fishing local waters, you’ll use only a little of the line on your fly reel, but allow me to start at the beginning.

The Fly Reel

The fly line system is comprised of the reel, backing, fly line, leader, and tippet sections. When setting up your fly reel, the most likely, at least when you’re starting out, the fly shop selling you the reel will tie fly-line backing material to the fly reel. The backing material is strong yet flexible braided dacron thread, that is used if a fish pulls all your fly line off the reel (in most cases, the fly line is less than 100′ long. The backing comes into play so you won’t necessarily lose the fish if all the fly line is in play. Reel the backing back in then reel in the line. In the past 20 years, I’ve gone down to backing maybe four times, and I fish a lot.

In most cases, your fly will be a very small thing, and the hook eye will be too small for the fly line to go through, so the end of the fly line is connected to a fly leader. We connect the two using either a knot or a loop-to-loop connection.

Tippet: What Is It and Why Do I Need It?

I guess it’s time to talk about Tippet. In the chart above, you can see that with Fly Fishing, we use the regular line that the spin and bait fishermen use, namely, the fishing line. Where they tie it directly onto their reels and fill their reels with it, we use it to go from our leader to our fly, in short sections. In the chart above, you can see that the 10-pound-test fishing line is equal to 0x tippet that fly anglers use. So, we call our 10# test, 0x. Four-pound-test is what most of our trout leaders end in, we call it 5X. It comes in monofilament, nylon, some other (unknown to me) plastics, and even fluorocarbon (lines that even the fish cannot see. (*Ken’s Tip -always make sure to use fluorocarbon line as the line that’s tied to the fly. Have at least two feet of fluorocarbon tied to the end of your leader. It looks more natural to the fish if they can’t see the line).

Tippet comes in several sizes and comes on different size spools. Most fly shops have tiny spools (because we only need a little at a time)of 30 meters or about 100ft., but the cost compared to a 500-yard spool at your local sporting goods store is twice or three times as much. Whether you’re first starting or when you’re a pro, you can save money by buying bigger spools of regular fishing lines and manually winding it onto your own small spools.

All fishing line isn’t equal though. When buying fly line in large quantities, like a 500 yard spool, have a look at the diameter of the line, usually measured in thousands of an inch (.0X or .XXX) Match it up to what you see in our chart. Our 4lb test, known as 5X is .007 (seven thousandths of an inch in diameter. Plastic line will probably be larger, up to .14 and fluorocarbon will probably be the same or smaller.

As you can see above in the close-up, I tied a triple surgeon’s knot, one of the easiest and strongest knots you’ll ever learn to tie, to connect a five-inch piece of red 30# test line to a three-inch piece of 20#-test line.

When tying together different size tippets always use a triple surgeon’s knot.

When tying together two pieces of the same size tippet, use a double surgeon’s knot.

Store-bought leaders

The leaders you find in stores, from Cabelas and Dicks Sporting Goods, all the way to your local fly shop, sell leaders from many different companies, in many different sizes and line strengths. If we can say that each leader company has its own formula for making that tapered leader, we’ll also say that none of them are designed to connect directly to a fly. For that, you need tippet material.

Use the right size gear for the Target Prey

Just as in bait or spin fishing, you choose your gear by the type or size of fish you’re going after. You wouldn’t go after a shark with your little daughter’s Barbie fishing pole. We’re going to go back into the logic of things and again into the numbers that modern fly anglers use to describe their fly-fishing gear.

Salmon, Striper, Mackerel

Salmon, especially Pacific Salmon such as the Chinook, Striper Bass, and Mackerel (a medium-size saltwater fish sought for it’s flavor) are examples of target prey you’ll want to catch on a 7wt or 8wt rod. They can all be found within a short distance from shore (when in salt water), and in freshwater, salmon and striper come up the rivers to spawn at different times of the year. Sea trout also should be included in this weight category. All of these fish will take similar flies, all are great fighters, especially on a fly rod. If you’re using an 8wt rod, you should also use an 8 or 8.5 weight line – using something smaller will result in not being able to load the energy into the rod as well. Follow the chart for leader size when using an 8wt. If you’re fishing with a size 0 or 2 fly, chances are that you’ll want something around 8-10lb test, or size 2 to 0 leader, or in some cases, heavier.