Transcript: Fly Line Essentials with Mac Brown
Transcript
Marvin:
[0:04] Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Flower, back with another Flyline Essentials with Mack Brown. How are you doing Mack?
Mac:
[0:11] I'm doing great. How are you Marvin?
Marvin:
[0:13] As always, I'm just trying to stay out of trouble. And on this episode, we wanted to talk about picking the right fly line. And that really, you know, kind of starts with breaking down the taper, right?
And the front taper of the fly line and the back taper of the fly line.
Mac:
[0:28] That's right. If we look at the significance of both of those areas, it's going to really affect overall what kind of objective and goal that you're trying to achieve, like on a bigger river versus a small creek versus a big lake impoundment.
You're going to want three different things there. The one line is really not cut out to do all three of those.
Marvin:
[0:55] Yeah. And so when we talk about the front taper, right, we can basically have, you know, what we say when it's aggressive and that's really kind of how quickly it steps down, right? Right.
And the more aggressively it steps down, the more acceleration you have.
And, you know, there are just certain use cases where you want that in a presentation, right?
Mac:
[1:16] Yeah, like in a, say a bass bug taper with a big frog pattern made of deer hair with a lot of air resistance, that would be a very, you know, good thing to have it abrupt in the front, very short and abrupt so it'll turn that over, you know, easily.
And then think about on, say, a trout stream throwing an elk hair caddis with a, you know, a longer leader, you'd want that to be bleeding that energy off because you don't need quite the same acceleration to turn over that, you know, small dry fly.
Marvin:
[1:47] Right. Yeah, so you want something that wasn't quite as severe and, you know, and so the interesting thing too, right, is a more aggressive taper can also help you if you're casting short distances, right, because you don't have as much kind of aerial real estate to kind of work your mojo and so that can help you load the Rod too, right?
Mac:
[2:08] That's right. It'll help you load it up quicker. Yeah. If you don't have much, you know, outside the tip.
Marvin:
[2:12] Yeah. And then of course we could always go down the rat hole and talk about, uh, you know, how you need heavier lines for faster rides, but we may be here all night if we do that, right?
Mac:
[2:23] Oh, yeah. We better stay away from that one.
Marvin:
[2:24] Yeah. And so, yeah, go ahead.
Mac:
[2:28] Well, it's just so many of them have gotten faster and it's gotten so out of control and you know AFMA came up with that in 59 from Myron Greger with the line designations you know how much of you know say a three-way to first 30 feet 100 grains and and so on you get to the you know five weight being 140 that leaves you you know the next number in between a four weight 120 and with the rods you know becoming so much stiffer the the last 15, 20 years, then you start hearing instructors say, well, buy a line, two line weights heavier, that should never be the case, but it's just out of control.
Somehow, I have to know somebody needs to step in and make some regulations on, on not just lines, but the rods too. The rods ought to have a designation to be called a five versus an eight versus a three. Yeah.
Marvin:
[3:21] And so, you know, we talk about the step down on the front taper, but I think what some people don't understand is there's actually a back taper on the head of a fly line too, right?
Mac:
[3:31] That's right, and that's actually really important as well. Think about a long rear taper is something that we use a lot, which we're not gonna address shooting heads.
We're gonna hold that off for the next podcast, but there's a great example, because it's so explosive and the weight's so short and concentrated, you know, heavy, it's like 20 foot, maybe 25 feet of a head, and you're trying to throw this thing two, 300 feet.
I mean, that's what they do a lot in the, you know, ACA tournament style casting.
Well, there's no way we could do that without a long rear taper, because it would just snap right when they hit the cast.
So there's an example of where that longer rear taper really helps, so it's not breaking off, you see.
Then it gets to the skinny, the skinny line after that transition's been made, the cast has been launched, and then we can get really, really small, you know, small shooting line to follow it.
And that's kind of the best example I can think of to simplify it when you have something real heavy. You know, you're going to have a better transition.
Marvin:
[4:32] Yeah, and I think too, right, having a longer back head or back taper on the head is going to let you – is gonna let you, it's gonna make it easier to men line, right?
Mac:
[4:44] Absolutely, yeah, because you'd be able to have greater, you know, just take an aerial mend, make a forward cast, reach out, reach back.
You can sit and control very easily left and right, you know, curves with, you know, short distances.
And if that rear taper is longer, it's going to transmit that reach out, reach back, because basically what you're creating is a wave that travels down the line.
And of course, the wave doesn't propagate as good if it's skinny line going to fat line.
I mean, if it's a smoother transition, that'll work much better than having an abrupt taper back there.
Marvin:
[5:18] Yeah, and I think the other thing we were talking about before we started recording too is you kind of have to kind of in your head, and the manufacturers have started kind of making this easier for the anglers, is think about how long the head is on the fly line because it's generally pretty difficult to cast more than the head.
You generally have to shoot the running line. And so I know, you know, SA's got color coding, you know, where the running line is a different color from the head and when you see, you know, that you're close to the, uh, to the end of the head, you know, it's time to launch the cast, right?
Mac:
[5:48] That's right. Yeah. That that's been really a big improvement, you know, the last, the last bunch of years where they, they went to these, where the color was actually visible, you know, cause before they did that, you know, a lot of anglers would take a Sharpie and put a bunch of marks around their fly line.
And it's just a lot easier to have a color change.
Marvin:
[6:08] Makes it a lot easier. Yeah. You know, a hundred percent. And so when we kind of translate this kind of front and back taper and kind of length of the head kind of to the buying decision in the shop, there's probably, I mean, we could really get crazy with it, but I guess if we probably talked about double tapers, weight forwards, and triangle taper lines, we could probably cover the large universe of use cases, right?
Mac:
[6:33] I think so. I think that would be the best way to do it.
I still like double taper, but I'm in the minority, for sure, because that's not a real common line.
If you look at the catalogs from all the different manufacturers, they'll have 80 different brands of weight forwards and there'll be only one double taper choice.
That's what's become pretty standard and back when we were kids it was pretty much 50-50.
The catalogs were still pushing a lot of DT lines.
And I just like it better because if you want to say go to the lake or go to the river or go to a small stream, the double taper I feel like is the most versatile to do everything.
So if I was going to have one line, that's why I like it the best.
I could still throw far on the lake comfortably because I've got the weight to do so, you know, with the whole 90-foot line being a double taper.
And if I want to fish short, it's going to perform well short on a small creek and it'll be a beautiful roll casting line for a medium to big size river.
So to me, it's the best of everything. Yeah.
Marvin:
[7:39] But that also means, right, that you have to take ownership of managing the line performance with your leader design, right?
Mac:
[7:47] That's right, I use a lot of long, really long leaders.
With that setup and that's why I prefer long, you know, really long leaders and a lot of times people ask me my gosh That's really ridiculously long Well, if you think about it, i'm gonna explain it real real quick and it'll make sense to you like everybody That's watched videos on youtube about forming a d loop for a roll cast You can have a dynamic, you know d loop which means it's in motion and and there's a little timing element to hit it forward Or we could do it static, But the beauty of it is if there's a long leader What's making that cast is the fly line that's up by the rod tip to what we call point P where the fly line rests in the water.
And just think if you have a double taper with say 15 feet of line out from the tip, I'm turning over all mono, so I have this fat line that's going to turn over something that's almost weightless to turn over in front, which is going to work better.
Having a double taper, now the same example, say I'm throwing a 30 foot leader, now I've I've got the same 15 foot at the tip, but now I've got 30 more feet of fly line that has weight sitting on the water.
You see the problem with that? I'm going to have to use a lot, a lot greater effort to make that go. I can do it, but it's, which was more comfortable. The one that takes less effort. That's why I like the long leader set up for DT lines.
And then once somebody plays with that, they'll be like, my gosh, this is easy.
But yeah, so I think it's just a, it's just a different twist, you know? Yeah.
Marvin:
[9:14] And then I would say, you know, so if most people are fishing a seven and a half to, you know, nine foot leader, maybe 12, give or take, you know, the benefit really of the double taper without having to customize the leader design all the time, right, is that it's a relatively level line, even though it's a double taper, like the, there's very little, um, kind of change from the back of the line to the front of the line in terms of diameter.
So you get a really, you know, smooth acceleration, uh, that's really good for like dry fly fishing. And I know you like it because you like it for distance casting because it gives you a lot of hang time, right?
Mac:
[9:49] Right. Yeah, the DT is great. Great distance line. Yeah.
Marvin:
[9:52] And then, you know, I think, gosh, I mean, I would imagine probably 80% of all the lines that are made today are some form of weight forward, right?
Mac:
[10:02] That's right.
Marvin:
[10:02] Yeah. And so, you know, back to what we were talking about earlier, kind of how aggressive you're dropping down that front taper is really kind of how aggressive that turnover is.
And so, you know, when you need an aggressive taper, you'll see that for like bass bugs, like you were talking about, or fishing hoppers, right, where you need that acceleration to turn that leader over, um, you know, I know for example, yeah, or like, for example, I really like the SA, I think it's now, it used to be the GPX, I think now it's the NPX line.
That's such a good line for like short, you know, trout fishing, right? Because it loads rods well too, right? Oh yeah.
Mac:
[10:37] And we can't leave out the, you know, the famous bobber-lobber technique and And of course, having a short, aggressive taper, like you're saying, is going to make it a lot easier to turn over these nymph rigs where there's a bunch of split shot and indicator and for indicator rigs.
So I mean, that's also a big plus for that, you know? Yeah.
Marvin:
[10:57] And then kind of to come back to your hypothetical with the double taper and the roll cast, you know, a way to kind of get in between that to kind of cheat is the triangle taper, right? Yeah.
Mac:
[11:09] That's a great line. brainchild from Lee Wolfe years ago and it is a great roll casting line as well.
And of course it's bleeding off energy because as the tapers reduced, it's just imagine if people are confused what triangle taper means if you just draw on a piece of paper a long skinny triangle that goes to a fine point at the end and the whole way back, this is a 90-foot line, then it gets fatter and fatter the whole way back.
So you're basically talking about just a big long triangle that's skinny.
And the beauty of that is, any time that the mass is being reduced, so the fat parts, you know, back at the reel where the backing is, then every time you make a cast, the energy is being bled off, which is going to make it accelerate, which is going to also make it more delicate for, say, dry fly presentations, going to make it a good roll casting line.
[12:05] It's going to be nice for, you know, small dries, things like that it's going to work excellent.
It's not a distance line though. And the reason I say that is we have this happen a lot over the years with candidates that are going down the path of CICP for becoming instructors and they're beating their heads against the wall, throwing a triangle tape or trying to be a big distance caster and it's not going to go very far.
I mean you're going to hit the same breaking point, which is usually around 105 feet, it'll never go any further, no matter how good you are.
So that's what's holding them back is what I'm saying. So I have to throw that in there about distance, because that would not be a good choice if that was the goal.
Marvin:
[12:45] Yeah, got it. but I've got several great small creek line.
Mac:
[12:49] Oh, I love it for small streams and if it's a dry fly day, like this time of year, we still have a lot of spinners every day at 10, 11 o'clock and we're throwing it a lot with these small, like 22, 24 spinners, just like we're fishing a tailwater, but we're fishing wild streams coming out of the national parks.
That's a fantastic line for doing that.
Marvin:
[13:13] We want to give a shout out to our friends at Scientific Anglers who are generously sponsoring the series and kind of remember folks, we love questions.
And you can DM either me or DM Mac.
Instagram is probably the flavor of choice, but wherever you find us works, or you can email us. And the way it's working is if you send a question in, we're going to enter in our drawing for a signed copy of Mac's book, Casting Angles. And then we're going to have a Q&A episode at the end of everything.
And if we use your question on that episode, we are going to enter you in a drawing to pick an essay line of your choice.
So get the questions in, because we love them.
In the next episode, as we mentioned at the top, we're going to talk about sinking lines, and then the one after that, we're going to talk about shooting lines, and then I think we've maybe got flyline care, and then I think we'll probably do our Q&A, but I think that's what we've got on tap, Mack Brown.
Mac:
[14:03] That sounds like a good plan, Marvin.
Marvin:
[14:04] Oh, there you go. Well, listen, folks, it's getting hot again in the southeast, so I'll say leave the muskies alone. You may need to leave the trout alone, but get out there and catch something.
Tight lines everybody. Tight lines back.
Mac:
[14:18] That's fine, Marvin.