Fly Fishing Tackle for Beginners

Fly Fishing Tackle

Fly Fishing has many different facets, but the consistent theme through the whole sport is that your tackle must be the correct standard and individual items must be compatible with all your other tackle items.

Tackle Standards

I always tell new fly anglers that the standard of you tackle must be tip top, don’t worry so much about getting the most expensive Hardy rod, don’t worry about having top dollar fly line, but the standard of what you have must be good. Now, before I get hundreds of email telling me the most expensive tackle is the highest standard, let me tell you, I know that. Remember, I am talking about new starters in the sport, they are not going to spend £1000/$1500 on line, reel and rod. So the most important thing is that what they get is of a good standard. Well, how do they know what is good and what is not. The answer is simple, go to your local tackle shop or fly fishery and tell them you are new and you want a good standard of equipment. I think that fly fishing is the only sport where you can go into a specialist fly shop or fly fishery and be confident you are not going to get ripped off. They want you to go back and spend your money on the top quality gear, so they are going to treat you like royalty. In fact I know many many fly fisheries that would lend you fly gear to ‘have a go with’, before you buy.

Why does the standard have to be good? Well, a few reasons. Firstly and most important, we don’t want to harm the fish. Using old or incorrect fly gear will result in losing fish (possibly with the fly still lodged) or not being able to cast properly which can be dangerous. Remember, this applies to new and experienced fly anglers, old and worn expensive fly tackle is worse than having cheap new fly fishing tackle….

Tackle Compatibility

New fly anglers need to know the basics, and the very very basic thing to understand is that fly line and fly rods are rated individually. By that I mean that fly line comes in varying  weights, rods are specially designed to carry a certain weight of line. The line is manufactured to exacting industry standards called AFTM.

AFTM stands for the Association of Fishing Tackle Manufacturers. AFTMA stands for the American Fishing Tackle Manufacturers Association. Just in case you were wondering.

The AFTM is a scale of line weights. The heavier the line, the greater the AFTM number. The manufacturers weigh the first 10 yards excluding the level tip and rate the line according to the table.

AFTM Table

AFTM number	In grains (range)	In grams	In ounces
3	100 +/- 6	6.48	0.228
4	120 +/- 6	7.78	0.274
5	140 +/- 6	9.07	0.32
6	160 +/- 8	10.42	0.366
7	185 +/- 8	11.99	0.422
8	210 +/- 8	13.61	0.48
9	240 +/- 10	15.55	0.55
10	280 +/- 10	18.14	0.64
11	330 +/- 12	21.38	0.75
12	380 +/- 12	24.62	0.86

Incidentally, there is some controversy with regards to very end of the fly line. The level tip on some lines can be as much as 2 ft. This, I believe, was an industry standard. I have also heard that it was also a manufacturing fault and the level tip should in fact only be 6 inches.

The point of all this is that the fly line AFTM should match the rod’s AFTM.

If you were to put an 8 weight line on a 4 weight rod you would probably break the rod. You would certainly overload the rod and make it feel slow and sluggish.

If you were to put a 4 weight line on an eight weight rod you probably would find that the rod failed to bend very much and the casting would be very inefficient. the higher the AFTM rating, the heavier the line, therefore requiring a more sturdy rod. Fly lines up to AFTM rating of 5 are considered to be river lines, lines from 6 to 9 are considered to be still water lines and lines above 9 are considered to be sea lines….of course there are always exceptions!

So there you have it the very basics in fly fishing tackle standards and compatibility!