How do you throw a feather?
You don’t.
You tie the feather to something heavy and then a toss the two of them together. This is the principle behind casting with a fly rod. See how easy fly fishing is!
I wish my friends Ron and Greg would have explained this to me when I first started fly fishing. I think it would have saved me some early embarrassing moments of fly fishing.
The principle purpose of a fly rod is to deliver the fly line out towards a trout with a fly somehow attached to the situation. More about bad delivery and stupid fly imitations later on. The principle of spin casting is just the opposite as the weight of the lure carries the line to the fish.
There is a lot of kinetic energy and physics that is involved, but don’t worry we will get to that later when we cover casting. The good news is that we will cover that before we get to the entomology and biology if you were asking.
To do all this line tossing you need gear that will support that kind of physics. Before we start picking our rod let’s look at the whole fly delivery engine thing one more time. We discussed our rod, but as you can imagine there are many different sizes and types of rods. They are most often differentiated by length and weight. Since we are just getting started most common trout fly rods are between 7’ and 9’ here out East. The most common weight is between 4wt and 6wt. Don’t send me hate mail yet remember I said common.
Most popular modern rods are made of graphite. The very early fly rods were made of bamboo and these handcrafted rods are still highly regarded by many anglers. We are not going to talk about bamboo now because I would then have to go deep and talking about kilts. I think they are silly unless you are drinking scotch then who really cares anyway.
In principle the smaller the fish the smaller and less weight you need in your rod. For bigger fish the converse holds true. So fishing for sunfish an 8’ 4wt rod will do just fine. For trout you won’t go wrong with a 9’ 5wt rod. I like the 9’ because it helps when you are nymph fishing and need some extra reach. It doesn’t you’re your 8’ 4wt rod isn’t good for trout it is. I have a great Orvis 4wt rod and I still enjoy using it under that right conditions. Best suited for wild trout in small streams or when I am dry fly-fishing over smaller trout and fish.
Part two & three of this post we will look at reels, fly lines and a few modestly priced set-ups to get you started. Your assignment this week is to throw a feather and please don’t put on a kilt unless you are drinking scotch.
You don’t.
You tie the feather to something heavy and then a toss the two of them together. This is the principle behind casting with a fly rod. See how easy fly fishing is!
I wish my friends Ron and Greg would have explained this to me when I first started fly fishing. I think it would have saved me some early embarrassing moments of fly fishing.
There is a lot of kinetic energy and physics that is involved, but don’t worry we will get to that later when we cover casting. The good news is that we will cover that before we get to the entomology and biology if you were asking.
To do all this line tossing you need gear that will support that kind of physics. Before we start picking our rod let’s look at the whole fly delivery engine thing one more time. We discussed our rod, but as you can imagine there are many different sizes and types of rods. They are most often differentiated by length and weight. Since we are just getting started most common trout fly rods are between 7’ and 9’ here out East. The most common weight is between 4wt and 6wt. Don’t send me hate mail yet remember I said common.
Most popular modern rods are made of graphite. The very early fly rods were made of bamboo and these handcrafted rods are still highly regarded by many anglers. We are not going to talk about bamboo now because I would then have to go deep and talking about kilts. I think they are silly unless you are drinking scotch then who really cares anyway.
In principle the smaller the fish the smaller and less weight you need in your rod. For bigger fish the converse holds true. So fishing for sunfish an 8’ 4wt rod will do just fine. For trout you won’t go wrong with a 9’ 5wt rod. I like the 9’ because it helps when you are nymph fishing and need some extra reach. It doesn’t you’re your 8’ 4wt rod isn’t good for trout it is. I have a great Orvis 4wt rod and I still enjoy using it under that right conditions. Best suited for wild trout in small streams or when I am dry fly-fishing over smaller trout and fish.
Part two & three of this post we will look at reels, fly lines and a few modestly priced set-ups to get you started. Your assignment this week is to throw a feather and please don’t put on a kilt unless you are drinking scotch.
