Help me build a rok solid fly set up.

[thinhorn_AK]

Wait a minute, I thought you don't cast the rod. I'm confused, now you're getting me off to a bad start

My bad, I walked right into that one.

 

[RME]

My bad, I walked right into that one.

No worries my friend. I've never heard of the rod casting thing but at one time I was pretty involved with the old FFF casting instructor program and there were raging debates for years over various casting "defintions". In print people would say you have to use a word this way but then in conversation they'd immediately revert back to old usage without realizing it because language isn't easy to change.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

No worries my friend. I've never heard of the rod casting thing but at one time I was pretty involved with the old FFF casting instructor program and there were raging debates for years over various casting "defintions". In print people would say you have to use a word this way but then in conversation they'd immediately revert back to old usage without realizing it because language isn't easy to change.

Pretty much exactly what I just did. I’m in the middle of dealing with all sorts of fishing stuff right now. Between making sure I’m all set for the spring once ice is off here, prepping g for my trip to fish down in Belize, then getting ready for a bonefish trip to Molokai over the winter, I’ve been unconsumed with this stuff for a bit, add some winter steelhead and that’s all I’ve been doing. Now I need to think about going on a few bear hunts and an aoudad hunt this time next year.

 

[Dos XX]

I think all my rods are capable of it, I do t think I am though.

Luckily I’ve never really needed to get my line more than 50-60 feet out.

Yeah. I was being funny. Or trying to.

 

[Flyjunky]

Now that is a strange way to “fly” fish. I’ve done that for steelhead and it’s cool to
Be fishing but not really a style that I love. Like 9feet of 30lb mono, a bobber, weight, an egg and then a hook a few inches under that. It works, I’m not sure it’s really fly fishing though.

What’s super lame though is steelhead fishing with a bobber and a spin rod….

Anything but swinging for steelhead is lame

 

[thinhorn_AK]

Anything but swinging for steelhead is lame

Swinging is cool but it’s lame to be stuck on small sections of giant awesome rivers. I got into Spey last year but it wasn’t very effective since I fish form a boat 95% of the time.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

Yeah. I was being funny. Or trying to.

Yeah I was too.

I have an area on my property where I have enough room for a backcast and enough clear area to cast 90 feet but I don’t even try usually. Before saltwater trips I work on 30-60 feet with a single back cast.

 

[flyfisher117]

Jimmy’s is a great shop, I miss talking to Jimmy when I lived in Idaho Falls. I hope it’s still great now that Fly Fish Food has taken it over.

They aren’t bad now that fly fish food took over. But there’s a couple guys working there that definitely aren’t my favorite. I’ve tried to branch out and support other shops in the area because of them.

 

[wowzers]

I still vote that a 9’ 5wt is the best all around rod. If you feel under gunned with it get a single hand Skagit line and some cheap mono for running line and you can huck huge flies.

TFO makes an interesting rod called the drift that you can use at lengths from 9’-12’3”. Is setup to euro nymph, dry fly or trout Spey. I picked one up from Sierra Trading for sub $200 but I’ve yet to fish it. I’m skeptical if it can do everything it claims well.

As others said for the majority of trout fishing in Idaho the reel is mainly to hold you line. I actually like the older click and pawl style.

 

[dgfavor]

Thanks for all the comments from everyone.

After researching, watching videos, feedback from here... I will be buying the Lamson and putting some SA line from the local fly shop Jimmy's in Idaho Falls. It seemed best band for the buck and that's what this current build is aimed towards.

Has anybody had any experience with the KastKing Chest Pack? Seems like a decent bargain.

Kastking chest pack

Remember, this is to help all new fly fisherman get started with above average gear without spending 1500 dollars on a reel/rod combo. If all goes and I enjoy it as much as I think I will, Ill upgrade next spring to some fancy stuff...

Right on! You're on your way. Personally, I rarely use a chest pack or fanny setup around here. I get by often with just a lanyard that has a rack of tippet, floatant, and hemostat/scissors. Stuff a flybox in my pocket then just add water!




It can be as simple or complicated as a person wants to make it...and at the end of the day a fish with a brain the size of a pea usually outsmarts us anyway!! My wife says I take it too serious - she says my mantra is "either you're fishing or you're rowing! We gotta have a fly on the water!!" This is her approach...






I know we would have had an eat right off the end of that island if she wasn't chillin' just enjoyin' the damn day!!

Somehow, thru alot of years, we haven't killed each other stuck in a 16ft boat for hours on end.

 

[Cherokeeguide]

I was a licensed and bonded hunting and fly fishing guide (#2725) in California from 1995 to 2012 and was a contributing editor for California Fly Fisher magazine from 2001 to 2012.

Reading from other threads I picked up a TFO NXT Black from Sierra for $79.90. 9' length in 5W.

That'll work.

Now ive done a little research on reels. Liquid Lamson, Sage Spectrum, Orvis Clearwater, TFO is what I narrowed it down to.

That'll work, too. In truth, though, just about anything will. Most trout aren't going to be played off the reel. It generally takes an unusually large and unusually spunky trout for things like "low initial start up torque" on a disc-drag reel to matter, or even the disc drag itself, for that matter.

Need advice and links to good deals for..

1. Reel

2.Backer and Line (Size)

3.Tippet (Size)

4. Fly's for South Fork Snake you'd recommend. And a tip for methods (Nymph or Dry flies?)

5. Any good pack or chest rig that would be great to start with.

1. We've covered that. In trout fishing, and indeed most freshwater fishing, you can pretty much use whatever you want, from a cheap $9.99 Aventik CM to something with a caged frame and exposed palming rim spool machined from bar stock aluminum and Type 3 anodized, having a disc drag with low initial startup torque, that cost several times more. The TFO reel that you like will work just fine.

2A. Most "trout class" fly lines have cores at around 20# test, so it is pointless to use backing stronger than that. 20# braided Dacron, dyed orange, and made by Cortland, is what I use, but you can use whatever you want in 20# braided Dacron.

2B. Line size is dictated by your rod. You have a five-weight rod. Pair it with a five-weight line to begin with. A true five-weight fly line is supposed to weigh 140 grains over the first 30' of "head," regardless of taper or type, but there's a range of tolerance, where a line is still considered a five-weight if it weighs 136 grains to 146 grains.

Your first line should be a floating line. That is the most useful for trout fishing on rivers and streams.

You will find five-weight floating lines in either weight-forward (WF) or double-taper (DT) formats. In floating line, I have a strong personal preference for DT lines. They roll cast better, tend to float like corks, come off the water easier and cleaner, AND, contrary to conventional wisdom, and as proved to me time and again by champion tournament castr Steve Rajeff, they also shit all over WF lines for distance.

To be specific, I prefer Cortland 333 or 444 DT -5F as my general purpose trout line. The difference between those two is that 444 costs more and has welded loops at each end, which I don't need or want, so I generally buy the cheaper of the two. Also, the Cortland 333 and 444 lines are true to their line class in terms of how much they weigh over the first 30' of head. When I buy a five-weight line, I want it to actually be a five-weight line and not a five and a half weight, or a five and three quarters weight. And, both the 333 and 444, which are the same nowadays excepting for presence or absence of welded loops, both float like corks. I have a few of these still in use that are two decades old, so they last a long time, too, if you take care of them.

3. In trout fishing, tippet is something I add to a tapered leader to restore casting performance if the leader has been shortened due to multiple fly changes. It is sized the same as my leader's built-in tippet. How I choose leader / tippet size is to divide the hook size of my fly by 3 and 4. If, for example, I am fishing a size 12 fly, doing this will give me a choice of 3X or 4X as the leader and tippet size. The X number is like wire gauge; smaller is thicker. If my size 12 fly is heavier or bulkier than normal, I want to use the stiffer of the two choices, which would be 3X in this case.

4. I've fished for trout on rivers in California, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and generally have the same 13 fly patterns in my box. They're generally not exotic, nor are they location specific. I fish the same elk hair caddis on the upper Madison River in Montana that I've fished on the South Fork of the Kern in California, for example.

Right now, my fly box for general trout fishing contains examples of: Parachute Adams, Elk Hair Caddis, Blue-Winged Olive, Chernobyl Ant, San Juan Worm, Prince Nymph, Pheasant Tail Nymph, Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear, Bead-Head Olive, Copper John, Zebra Midge, Muddler Minnow, Woolly Bugger, and Olive Matuka. If you search "Dozen must-have trout flies," you'll get a list similar to this, and you'll get it for a reason.

5. I'm a simple guy and like to keep things simple so I don't carry a bunch of crap when I go catching. Any small chest pack that'll hold my MFC fly box, a spare spool loaded with a sink-tip line, leaders, tippet material, hemostats, a thermometer, nippers, fly dryer, fly float goop, and a leader straightener will work for me.

There are two things not on your list that I would recommend.

One is a Tie-Fast tool for tying nail knots. The other is a copy of The Curtis Creek Manifesto by Sheridan Anderson.

 

[Cherokeeguide]

We fly fish because we like it and we enjoy it. Fly fishing is not, and never will be the best way to catch fish effectively

I disagree.

I fly fish precisely because I enjoy maximum fish contact. Other people go "fishing." "Fishing" is boring. I prefer to go "catching."

I grew up fishing the surf and shallow bays of Southern California with an Eagle Claw Trailmaster spinning rod, a Mitchell 308 loaded with 6# test, and crappie jigs.

On bays, the target species was Parabrax maculatofasciatus, commonly known as the spotted sand bass or spotted bay bass.

Why was that the fish I targeted? There are 51 million tons of the things in San Diego Bay. The only fish in San Diego Bay with more tonnage than that is the northern anchovy.

Spotted sand bass don't live in the big, bad open ocean. They live in shallow bays to maximum depths of 25' and are ambush feeders that orient to the bottom and relate to the shadow side of hard structure. The bulk of their diet consists of gammarid amphipods never over 2 cm long and generally less than 1 cm.

You Tube is littered with videos of kayak fishers who think they're having a great day on San Diego Bay or Mission Bay if they catch 6 "spotties" on gear tackle in the course of a day. The day I can't catch three dozen of the things during the prime 3 hours of a tide cycle on fly tackle is the day I'll do a seppuku ceremony on the bow of my boat.

That's a fish hooked and landed every six minutes.

Three things conspire to make gear tackle less effective than fly tackle for this niche of the angling universe.

1. You can't cast a lure small enough and light enough to look and act like real food with gear tackle. People who fish for "spotties" on gear almost universally comment on how hard the mean little bastards hit their lure. They hit them hard because they're triggering a reaction strike, rather than a feeding impulse.

2. You can't feel the take of these fish when using spinning gear. Take your shirt, pinch it between your thumb and index finger, and slowly pull it 1/8 of an inch from your chest. That's a spotted sand bass bite. I can feel that with my line hand when fishing fly tackle. The first bump is my fly hitting the back of the fish's throat. The second bump, it there is one, is my fly getting expelled from the fish's mouth. I need an instantaneous hook-set to capitalize on every grab and I get that by setting the hook with my line hand when fishing fly tackle.

3. If I blow a cast and my fly is going to run outside of the shadow cast by hard structure, I can just pick the line up out of the water and try again. On gear when that happens, I have to crank in almost my whole cast before I can make another.

I had two clients out on San Diego Bay who combined to pulled over 200 spotties out of the water in one day. That isn't going to happen using gear. The best I ever did myself was 72. The best I ever did on gear in fishing all day was around 30.

I rhink fly fishing in the Southern California surf is more effective and efficient than fishing the surf with gear is, too. That is especially true for catching California corbina, where you need the delicate and accurate delivery so easy to get with fly tackle and impossible to get on gear.

 

[7mm-08]

I was a licensed and bonded hunting and fly fishing guide (#2725) in California from 1995 to 2012 and was a contributing editor for California Fly Fisher magazine from 2001 to 2012.


That'll work.


That'll work, too. In truth, though, just about anything will. Most trout aren't going to be played off the reel. It generally takes an unusually large and unusually spunky trout for things like "low initial start up torque" on a disc-drag reel to matter, or even the disc drag itself, for that matter.




1. We've covered that. In trout fishing, and indeed most freshwater fishing, you can pretty much use whatever you want, from a cheap $9.99 Aventik CM to something with a caged frame and exposed palming rim spool machined from bar stock aluminum and Type 3 anodized, having a disc drag with low initial startup torque, that cost several times more. The TFO reel that you like will work just fine.

2A. Most "trout class" fly lines have cores at around 20# test, so it is pointless to use backing stronger than that. 20# braided Dacron, dyed orange, and made by Cortland, is what I use, but you can use whatever you want in 20# braided Dacron.

2B. Line size is dictated by your rod. You have a five-weight rod. Pair it with a five-weight line to begin with. A true five-weight fly line is supposed to weigh 140 grains over the first 30' of "head," regardless of taper or type, but there's a range of tolerance, where a line is still considered a five-weight if it weighs 136 grains to 146 grains.

Your first line should be a floating line. That is the most useful for trout fishing on rivers and streams.

You will find five-weight floating lines in either weight-forward (WF) or double-taper (DT) formats. In floating line, I have a strong personal preference for DT lines. They roll cast better, tend to float like corks, come off the water easier and cleaner, AND, contrary to conventional wisdom, and as proved to me time and again by champion tournament castr Steve Rajeff, they also shit all over WF lines for distance.

To be specific, I prefer Cortland 333 or 444 DT -5F as my general purpose trout line. The difference between those two is that 444 costs more and has welded loops at each end, which I don't need or want, so I generally buy the cheaper of the two. Also, the Cortland 333 and 444 lines are true to their line class in terms of how much they weigh over the first 30' of head. When I buy a five-weight line, I want it to actually be a five-weight line and not a five and a half weight, or a five and three quarters weight. And, both the 333 and 444, which are the same nowadays excepting for presence or absence of welded loops, both float like corks. I have a few of these still in use that are two decades old, so they last a long time, too, if you take care of them.

3. In trout fishing, tippet is something I add to a tapered leader to restore casting performance if the leader has been shortened due to multiple fly changes. It is sized the same as my leader's built-in tippet. How I choose leader / tippet size is to divide the hook size of my fly by 3 and 4. If, for example, I am fishing a size 12 fly, doing this will give me a choice of 3X or 4X as the leader and tippet size. The X number is like wire gauge; smaller is thicker. If my size 12 fly is heavier or bulkier than normal, I want to use the stiffer of the two choices, which would be 3X in this case.

4. I've fished for trout on rivers in California, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho, and generally have the same 13 fly patterns in my box. They're generally not exotic, nor are they location specific. I fish the same elk hair caddis on the upper Madison River in Montana that I've fished on the South Fork of the Kern in California, for example.

Right now, my fly box for general trout fishing contains examples of: Parachute Adams, Elk Hair Caddis, Blue-Winged Olive, Chernobyl Ant, San Juan Worm, Prince Nymph, Pheasant Tail Nymph, Gold Ribbed Hare's Ear, Bead-Head Olive, Copper John, Zebra Midge, Muddler Minnow, Woolly Bugger, and Olive Matuka. If you search "Dozen must-have trout flies," you'll get a list similar to this, and you'll get it for a reason.

5. I'm a simple guy and like to keep things simple so I don't carry a bunch of crap when I go catching. Any small chest pack that'll hold my MFC fly box, a spare spool loaded with a sink-tip line, leaders, tippet material, hemostats, a thermometer, nippers, fly dryer, fly float goop, and a leader straightener will work for me.

There are two things not on your list that I would recommend.

One is a Tie-Fast tool for tying nail knots. The other is a copy of The Curtis Creek Manifesto by Sheridan Anderson.

I love these kinds of responses. What an educational public service for a guy (like me) who has an interest in fly fishing. Thank you!

 

[ORwaterfowler]

Not sure I've seen it mentioned yet, but you don't have to buy a ton of pre-made leaders or constantly eat up the end to add more tippet from switching flies. Get a few 7.5' and 9' leaders, chop a couple of feet off the tip, and add a small 2mm tippet ring, then run whatever length and size of tippet is called for. You still get the thicker butt section to turn the fly over and more ability to control leader length and tippet stiffness for the day's needs or fly size.

 

[RME]

AND, contrary to conventional wisdom, and as proved to me time and again by champion tournament castr Steve Rajeff, they also shit all over WF lines for distance.

When he showed you that do you happen to remember what rod and line he was using?