Fly Fishing Tackle – Line Choice – Floating Line

Fly Fishing Tackle – Line Choice – Floating Line

Fly Fishing - Floating Line

In the art of fly fishing, there are many variants of fly fishing line. The important thing to work out before selecting which fly line to use while fly fishing is to understand where the fish are. Now, while fly fishing, you will be able to tell if the fish are on the surface as they will rise and you will see this, but what if they are not rising. To be successful at fly fishing you must think about your quarry and try to ‘think like a fish’. if its hot (25+c) then the fish are unlikely to be rising in the midday sun, however, if you see fish rising then you will need to be able to turn to your floating line.

Floating Line – History

Floating line’s history harkes back to the 2nd century, where fly fishing roots can be traced. Floating line was used by all fly anglers as the materials did not exist to do anything other than float. Also, my theory is that the method or activity of fly fishing was developed by anglers actually ‘seeing’ the trout rise to take fallen or emerging flies from the rivers surface.

Nowadays, floating lines are engineered and manufactured to enable them to be cast easily, far, accurately, comfortably and successfully. If you ask any fly fishing instructor, they will start a novice on floating line as it is by far the easiest line to cat.

Floating Line – Use of

Ok, there is a common misconception with beginners that floating line is only for Dry Fly Fishing, well that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most fly anglers use floating line to fish depths of water from 10 feet to sub-surface, this depth is determined by the length of leader, time left after the cast for the fly to sink and speed of retrieval of the line. So there you can imagine you cover most of the depths at which the trout/steelheads hunt for food unless the weather is really hot, in which case you would try intermediate or sinking lines, but we will come on to those!

Floating lines come with many different variables like colour, weight and design, yes, lines that do the same thing can be very very different. Firstly, dont let the colour of the line put you off, there are pink, yellow, green, blue, ivory and white as well as all of the fluorescent variants of those colours. Don’t worry the fish cant see the colour of the line, and if they can, it hasn’t stopped me catching with all of the above colours, what you want to buy is a floating line that is the best quality in your price range. I would say that you can get excellent floating lines for £30/$40, so I would tell a beginnner to not spend more than that initailly, they would be better getting a ‘weight forward’ line that matches there AFTM rating on their rod. Weight Forward just means that the majority of the weight in the line is closer to the end of the line than spread out acros the first 6-8feet, this just makes casting and accuracy easier for a new fly angler.