From Your Editor
… Lyndon Webb
I confess to yet again adding to my collection of fly-fishing books. This time
Fly-Fish Better – Practical Advice on tackle, methods and flies, by Art Scheck, has just joined the pile. And I can strongly recommend it.
Art Scheck is the editor of Saltwater Fly Fishing (a US magazine) and a freelance writer and editor on lots of things to do with fly fishing. He’s certainly a very thoughtful and highly experienced angler, and I find found a truckload of fascinating insights and helpful suggestions.
Chapter 1 was his entry into casting suggestions, and is headed: “Cast 90 Feet – Whether or not you want to.”
One of his ideas is something I sort of discovered for myself some years ago. A favourite stream of mine is the gorgeous little Stevenson River near Marysville. Lots of other people have found it too. I think it was just a few years ago in the Christmas holiday period I was told that there were 40 cars parked along the side of the road on the downstream section. Whether that’s true or not, the trout in the Steavo have certainly seen a lot of flies, and no doubt can provide highly informed opinions on the quality of the fly tying.
Now the Steavenson is not particularly wide, so as you meander along the banks your casts into prospective fishy spots are mainly short – typically just 10 – 12 metres. So when I visit the Steavenson I often take a three weight rod and load it with a four weight line. If you’re fishing is mainly just these short casts, then overloading the rod a bit makes for easier and more pleasant casting.
Art Scheck also comments on casting with lines lighter than the rating of the rod. In other words, try casting a five-weight line on a six-weight rod. I think the theory here is that you will need more line out of the rod tip to properly load the rod, so this might be a way of cribbing a few extra yards of distance. I hadn’t actually tried this, so I grabbed a six weight rod and a couple of five weight lines and raced up to a nearby football oval a few streets from where I live to check it out. I’d figured that a double taper line would be better than a weight forward line for this investigation, and it sort of worked, though I need to do a bit more serious experimenting (on days with not too much wind!) to see if it is a viable way of casting a bit further, particularly on stillwaters.
Another issue that my new friend Art Scheck addresses in his book are the leaders and tippets we use. Now this might be an abysmal confession on my part, but I have a number of fly reels in my fly fishing kit (purchased over many years), and all of them have the leaders permanently knotted and glued to the fly lines. Nail knots and other types of recommended connecting knots have been used, and invariably a drop or two of superglue then added at the knot to make the connection very very secure. So if I needed to change the overall construction of my leader then a pair of nippers and a few spools of lines of varying thicknesses in my kit enabled me to shorten or lengthen leader sections as required. (All a bit slow of course, and a waste of good fishing time!)
But according to Art Scheck us fly fishers should head off up the river with a packet of made-up leaders in our kit, this collection having leaders of varying constructions to better accommodate whatever conditions we face on our arrival. In other words, we should carry with us a selection of leaders of differing lengths and constructions so that we can quickly and easily change leaders on the river bank or lake edge to better suit the conditions we encounter. The leader we might use for flogging weighted wets would not be the same as the one we would want to use to delicately present small dry flies. This is all very obvious. (What have I been doing all these years?)
We need to be able to quickly and easily change leaders when we arrive at our fishing venues, and the obvious necessity is to be using leaders with loops at the end and fly lines similarly equipped.
I recently purchased a new fly line from a store in the UK. The store was having a sale and lines and leaders were selling at very cheap prices. So I emailed my order and when it arrived both the fly line and the leader came with loops at the ends, making the connection, and the later swapping of leaders, quick and easy. So I made a phone call, and a very helpful person at the Aussie Angler fly fishing store informed that these days good quality fly lines all come these days with tiny loops at both ends.
So there you go – with a pocket full of leaders that you can quickly swap around at the end of your new modern fly lines. But my problem is that I have a number of fly reels (purchased over many years) loaded with lines that don’t have neat little loops at the end because they’re fairly old, even though they still work ok. Bother! (Or words to that effect.) These lines are mostly in good condition and work fine, so how can I install loops?? I’ll think about over the next few weeks.
In the meantime, the rivers are closed so it’s all about stillwaters for the next few months. They’re very different to fishing rivers, but they’re great fun and the fish are often much larger. Enjoy your fishing over the next few months, and I would wish all our many readers good fortune and lots of success. (Put them back though. Flathead taste better!)