Choosing a Fly Fishing Rod

Fly Fishing is, of course, different from coarse fishing and sea fishing in that you are trying to catch fish not through tempting your prey with actual food but with an artificial fly made to fool the fish into thinking that it is taking an insect or fly. Sometimes these flies are on the surface and hence known as dry flies and sometimes below the surface and there a great range of flies for below the surface fishing including buzzers, lures and a bewildering range of exotically named flies such as cats whisker or boobie. Whatever the fly though it will be light and much lighter than actual food used in coarse and sea fishing and this impacts how you need to cast. Coarse fishing and sea fishing use food and often other weights to help the lines sink. As well as helping the bait sink this also helps the angler to cast. The casting action involves raising the fly rod in such a way that the weight of the bait e.t.c. on the end of the line creates firstly a backward momentum behind the angler and then as the rod is taken forward that momentum, as the rod bends to go forward again, takes forward the bait allowing the angler to cast a long way. However, with fly fishing rods you do not have the advantage of the fly to produce that back momentum that gets converted into forward motion as the rod bends and you cast forward again. The game angler is reliant on the line itself to do that for them and hence it is vital that your rod and line are properly balanced and the way that you can tell this is that every rod and line is given a number such that you need to ensure that the rod and line have the same number. Different numbers will result in an unbalanced outfit that you will struggle to cast with. Fly lines are numbered by weight from '1' to '15'. The lower the number the lighter the line, so how do you decide which is the right weight of line and hence fly fishing rod for you? The answer, of course, is the sort of fishing you intend to do. Most trout fly anglers prefer to use either a 4, 5, or 6 weight fly line, and the correctly matched fly rod, for most of their all-around trout fishing. The 4 weight would be for an angler that fishes small to medium water with smaller flies. The 5 weight line and rod combination is the most popular, by far, and should be considered the all-around choice for fishing most sizes of trout flies on most trout water. The 6 weight line and rod may benefit trout anglers fishing larger rivers, in wind, or casting larger weighted nymphs and bigger dry flies. That only leaves the question of how to cast to maximise the length of your cast. Like most things there is no substitute for practice and it’s best to try and practice away from the water to begin with.

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