What is the difference between fly lines

If you get to see your backing outside of your reel, you are having a good day. The backing is used to fight a fish when a ton of line is pulled off the reel. A normal trout setup will have about yards of 20 or pound backing.

The leader is normally made of a clear monofilament. This part of your line is tapered in diameter, starting at the butt section, which connects to your fly line, down to the bottom end which connects to your tippet material. Leaders come in many different diameters and lengths. You choose your leader material and size based on where you fish and what you fish for.

This material is made of the same stuff as your leader. Some still used a tapered, braided core with a thin sheath of plastic, but creating an accurate, tapered core proved to be difficult and costly. Modern fly lines use a level core and taper the coating, which is more accurate and repeatable in production.

The coating and core not only determine the fly line mass, but also determine how the line acts in different environments. Supple cores and coatings are ideal for cold water trout fishing. Harder cores and coatings are reserved for tropical environments. Typical tarpon lines range from 10 weight to 12 weight for example. Assuming the trout line is mainly used for dry flies, a 4 or 5 weight would be sufficient.

The tarpon line should feature shorter front and rear tapers than the trout line because a short front taper will aggressively cut through wind and turn over large flies with ease. A shortened rear taper allows the angler to quickly pick up and shoot line at moving fish. By comparison, the trout line would benefit from longer front and rear tapers. Here, the long front taper delicately delivers the dry fly without spooking rising fish. The longer rear taper enables the angler to carry long distances of fly line while false casting for pinpoint accuracy.

Once the line and fly have landed, the long rear taper also allows for mending to adjust the drift. Finally, the tarpon line should be built with a hard coating and core to combat the tropical heat, whereas the trout line should have a supple coating and core to reduce memory in cold environments. Understanding these basic principles of fly line design can explain almost every aspect of a fly line.

Total mass and mass tapering determine ideal fly size and how that fly is delivered while the fly line material determines what environment the line is best suited for. Roll all of these variables together, and you can decipher the complex world of fly line craftsmanship. If there are three then the lowest is the double taper the middle the weight forward and the largest is the shooting head weight. The development of modern fly rods which are faster in action than their predecessors has made the AFTM system slightly inaccurate.

Manufacturers are just squeezing the tolerances a little to allow deeper loading of these faster rods. Makers such as Rio and Scientific Anglers have specialist lines designed for these rods which are really half an AFTM size heavier than they should be so a 6wt line is really a 6. Also a big problem with a lot of casters is the amount of line that is aerialised prior to casting. As previously mentioned only the head or belly needs to be aerialised, many fishers try to hold too much line in the air resulting in a lot of running line outside the rod tip.

This running line has a different density to the weight forward element and as a result it moves through the air at a different speed. This promotes hinging, which causes slack line in the cast and a loss of power through the casting stroke. To combat this manufacturers now produce two tone lines where the head and running line are different colours. This gives a clear visual indicator as to exactly where the weight element ends. This builds consistency into your casting as the same amount of line is aerialised all the time.

This means the same power is needed all the time improving tempo and delivery of the final cast. Weight forward lines are also varied in their head lengths there are short headed versions of fly lines so less line is needed in the air to load the rod. These shorter headed lines have the same weight as a standard 30ft head but they are effectively heavier for their length so have more mass.

They are ideal where back casts are restricted but because they have more mass load a rod deeper and generate more speed so are very effective for turning over big flies for saltwater or pike fishing and are more effective at combating wind.

Salmon lines are built on the same principle as single handed lines - they come in double taper, weight forward and shooting head options and the short headed weight forwards that can be placed into the skagit category. However, and this is important, they are a lot longer in the head lengths than single-handed lines and as a result are not the same.

Salmon lines can vary in head length from 31ft right through to 70 feet or more. In addition to this they weigh differently and an 8 weight salmon line is heavier than an 8 wt line for a single-handed rod over the length of the head.

The correct fly line for the job regardless of their make up are essential to a successful and more importantly enjoyable days fishing, they come in all densities from floating to super fast sinking and hybrid lines which float in the main but have a sinking portion at the tip to allow some depth to be achieved without drowning all the line.

You can also get fly lines for saltwater fly-fishing. There are coldwater and tropical saltwater versions. Tropical lines have a stiffer plastic coating to cope with the heat and harsh conditions.

This makes them more stable than normal fly lines in tropical conditions but unsuitable for UK saltwater fly fishing due to our temperate climate. The best advice is to talk to an expert at any of our stores and make sure that you get the right line for your chosen discipline.

For more help and information on purchasing a new fly line please contact Sportfish on or email danny.