Sunday, June 13, 2010

Matching line weight with rod.

This comment was left recently. Thought I would share it.

Riverwalker... The simple way to determine if a line is right for a rod is that fly lines are designed in weight to fully load a mathing fly rod with 30 feet of line in the air. Even for the best of casters loading an eight weight rod with a two weight line would be almost impossible! Each rod is a little different and you can usually go up one size in your line, for example fishing a three weight line on a two weight rod will give you really great control on shorter casts. In some instances you can go down one line size also and get very delicate presentations, but the gap you had is too wide to cover. For the fishing you're doing your best shot is probably a weight forward or bass bug taper in a floating line and a weight forward intermediate sinker. The fly you're showing is basically a Woolly Bugger with some (looks like) rubber added to the tail. This pattern will catch the hell out of the bass, but try to find someone to tie you up some with a weed guard and in colors that would roughly match what ever colors you'd fish a jig in. Slow roll it along the bottom, particularly around the beds when the bass are bedding and they'll hammer the thing. Just remember that with a fly rod you're not going to be able to yank them out of cover like old Bill Dance does!
Hope that helps.....