Fly Blog

by Mark Waldin www.flycatcherinc.com A few articles back I discussed how useful a ligature knot is for tying tippet to leader. In this article I’ll show you how to make a ligature knot.

Ligature knots are easy to tie, require more line than some other knots and can be a bit tricky to tighten. A little practice will let you reduce the line consumption and get good at snugging up the knot. Here is how to do it.

Put the leader line (red) over the tippet. Make seven twists of the leader around the tippet :

Loop the leader line and lay it under the tippet. Now rap the tippet 7 loops around the leader:

Moisten the wrap. Alternately pull on the tag ends and then the lines to snug up the knot.Clip the tag ends. You have a ligature knot!

by Mark Waldin, www.flycatcherinc.com What to do with bubbles that get embedded in your thread wrap epoxy, is a common question. Of course, the best answer is to not get bubbles in the epoxy in the first place.

Here are a couple tips for avoiding bubbles in the epoxy.

• Warm your epoxy resin and hardener in a bath of warm water before you start. This will thin the epoxy and make it mix quicker. It will also help bubbles that do form to dissolve.
• Use a narrow, tall mixing bowl. Bubbles are introduced to the epoxy by the action of the stirrer folding air bubbles into the epoxy as it is stirred. Having less surface area lets you agitate below the surface without a lot of dragging along the surface.
• Use a stirring stick with a smooth surface. It has less likelihood to drag and fold the epoxy. A solid plastic coffee stirrer is a good tool.
• Go very slow and take your time. Yes, the epoxy will start setting as you are stirring. You will save more than enough time avoiding trying to get bubbles out of the epoxy to make up the difference. Besides, you’d be better off stirring a second batch part way through the application than trying to work with bubble laden epoxy.
• Don’t lift and stir. Keep the stirrer at the same level in the epoxy. The lifting action will drag epoxy up which will fold over and trap air. The down action will drag air into the epoxy along with the stirrer.
• Patience is key. If you think you are stirring too slowly and the epoxy is going to set up then you are probably doing it right!

by Mark Waldin www.flycatcherinc.com We all know that the smaller the tippet diameter and longer its length, the more fish you are going to catch. We also know that getting your fly to turn over properly gets harder, the smaller the tippet. What is the right size tippet to use in a specific fly fishing situation?

In general the tippet has to do the work of turning over the fly properly.  The lighter and more wind resistant (less streamlined) the fly is, the heavier the tippet will need to be.  A good rule of thumb for a dry fly rig is to divide the hook size by 3 to get an idea of the size of the tippet to use.  For example, a size 14 hook would suggest a size 4X or 5X tippet.  A tippet length of at least 2 feet should be used.

Wet flies tend to be heavier and more streamlined than dry flies.  They typically have enough momentum to carry themselves over without much help from the tippet.  A size 5x or 6x should be enough to cover most situations.

Streamers are a different breed altogether.  With their typically large wind resistance they can require a heavier tippet than dry flies or nymphs.  That said, you should rarely have to go heavier than a 3x tippet and in many cases you should be good with 4x or even 5x.

by Mark Waldin, http://www.flycatcherinc.com .. many rod blank manufacturers provide an extended warranty on their rod blanks.   If a rod tip breaks when you are fishing there is a good chance you will be able to get a new fly rod tip under the warranty.  Rod line guides are easily removed from the broken tip but if you epoxied the tip top to the rod, you will be looking to purchase a new tip top.  Not a big deal, but why put yourself through the bother when you do not have to?

Instead, glue your tip top to the top of the fly rod using a high temperature permanent hot melt glue.  These glues are extremely durable and fast holding.  If your rod breaks you will be able to reheat the tip top and slide the broken fly rod tip out.

by Mark Waldin www.flycatcherinc.com — Most people use knotless leaders when fly fishing.  As they fish they cut back on the leader adding new flies, the tippet becomes shorter until they need to add new tippet to the leader.  When the new tippet is used up they cut off the old knot and add a new tippet section.  This is done until the fly line leader becomes too thick to make a good tippet connection and it is time to put on a new leader.

To make leader last longer try this.  On a new leader, cut off the last 30 inches of tippet and tie on a new length of tippet. The knot will serve as a marker in future additions. By having the marker there to start with you will not overshoot the point where new tippet should have been added.   After fly fishing for awhile and when the tippet section shortens up so that you need new tippet, cut back the older tippet to 6 or 8 inches and add more tippet.  After doing this several times, cut back beyond the original tippet knot and start a new chain.

You will get a lot more use out of your fly line leader and if you use the ligature knot described yesterday you will not have to worry about your fly fishing line being overly weak.

by Mark Waldin www.flycatcherinc.com –You probably connect your fly fishing tippet to your leader using a blood knot, don’t you? Did you know that a blood knot is going to break before your line breaks, meaning it is the weakest link?

According to tests done by Art Scheck and reported in his book, Practical Advice on Tackle, Methods, and Flies, the best knot to use for tying tippet to leader for tippet sized 3x and smaller is a ligature knot. In his tests the ligature knot resulted in breakage occurring in the line itself and resulted in line strength that was 50% stronger than the blood knot!

You can find an example of the ligature knot on the Knots web site under the alternate title surgeon’s reef knot.

Reel Seat

The reel seat is the device that holds the reel on to the rod. Selection of a reel seat has more to do with aesthetics than anything else, with a couple of exceptions. A decent reel seat will hold the reel in place as well as a top of the line reel seat.

Reel seats come with aluminum, titanium, graphite or wood arbors (the shaft section of the reel seat). Wood arbor reel seats are mainly used in freshwater fishing as the wood (unless varnished and cared for) does not stand up well to saltwater. Aluminum reel seats need to be anodized to avoid pitting and corrosion. Titanium reel seats have the lightness of aluminum with added hardness and resistance to scratches and dings but cost more.

Wood arbor reel seats use metal hardware (called a skeleton) to secure the reel in place. Less expensive reel seats use anodized aluminum skeletons. The best reel seats use jeweler’s grade nickel silver skeletons.

Reel seats come in uplocking and downlocking models. The difference is that uplocking reel seats lock the reel in tight against the grip while downlocking reel seats lock the reel tight against the butt. Uplocking reel seats are typically inset into the grip so that the foot of the reel slides up into a pocket on the reel seat that is actually inside the grip. The significance of this is that the weight of the reel is shifted about an inch toward or away from the center of the rod, shifting the center of balance. The objective is to locate the center of balance of the rod directly underneath the hand when on the grip. This provides the least amount of fatigue.

A lighter reel is most likely best served with a downlocking reel seat, while a heaver reel is most likely best served by a uplocking reel seat. In fact, cigar shaped grips, used mainly on lighter weight rods, are built thin enough that they cannot accept an uplocking reel seat.

Reels are held in place by a pair of ‘hoods’ that slide over the reel feet. One hood is fixed, while the other hood travels (uplocking/downlocking). The traveling hood is held over the reel foot with a knurled, threaded ring that screws the hood up tight. Better reel seats have machined threads that have a fine pitch (number of threads per inch) while less expensive reel seats are stamped and have a coarser pitch.

The threaded ring is kept from unscrewing by its friction against the traveling hood. Better reel seats keep the ring from working loose by having a secondary ring behind the first ring that can be tightened up against the first ring acting like a lock nut. Some have a rubber O-ring between the two rings that adds additional friction keeping the assembly from slipping altogether. The best reel seats do not require a second locking ring because they use a very fine thread pitch to keep the ring from working loose.

Finally, reel seats come with either a blunt butt and end-cap or with a fighting butt. A fighting butt is an additional appendage on the bottom of the reel seat that provides a cork (typically) knobbed foot that assists the angler in fighting the fish. Fighting butts are found only on heavier weight rods.

by Mark Waldin Flycatcher — if you haven’t built a fly rod before, or if you haven’t built a lot of them, you may think that choosing a thread color is going to get you a fly rod with thread wrap that looks like the color you chose.  This couldn’t be further from the truth (unless you are looking at color swatches that have been adjusted to show you what the color will be like ‘on the fly rod’ as is done  on the Flycatcher web site).

Thread absorbs the epoxy resin that you use to coat the guide wrap and darkens as it does that.  It also becomes slightly translucent and darkens more as it transmits some of the background color of the fly rod blank.  Most wrapping thread colors will become almost black under cloudy skies or indoors and will show highlights of the thread color under direct sunlight.

If you want your thread color to show through on your fly rod, apply a good color preserver to the threads before you seal the wrap.  Color preserver will seal the threads and not allow the epoxy to penetrate.  If you look at a spool of thread you will see the thread has various color values depending on how the light is striking it.  So, you may wonder what color value the thread will have after it is sealed and epoxied to the fly rod blank.

I have found that as a rule of thumb you can expect the thread to take on the color value that is toward the darker part of the wrapping thread away from the sheen of reflected light.

Be careful when you apply the preserver.  Use at least two coats.  Make sure you seal beyond the edge of the thread wrap.  If you seal only up to the edge, the preserver will not run up under the thread at the edge.  It will give the epoxy a chance to penetrate from below at the edge of the wrap.  You will end up with a band of dark thread.  Also, don’t be careless applying the epoxy.  Make sure you stay within the margins of where your epoxy coating will extend.  Once the preserver is applied and dries it is as permanent as the epoxy that you put on.

by Mark Waldin Flycatcher — as if there weren’t enough variables to control, they had to come up with different length leaders, on God’s green earth why?

The longer the leader, the longer the distance between your heavy fly line and that delectable fly: less action to spook the fish. A longer leader will also provide a more delicate presentation. Of course you want to use the longest leader around, right? Not quite. Most common fly fishing leader lengths are 7 1/2, 9 and 12 ft. 9ft is a good all around leader length for most fly fishing.

Use a 12 foot when you can get away with it. The first thing that means is only use it if you are a skilled enough fly fisherman. Turning over a 12 ft leader requires a certain amount of fly casting skill. The heavier the fly, the harder it is.

The wind will have an affect on ability to cast as well. A longer leader is going to be more susceptible to a strong wind than a short leader, especially when you are casting a lightweight dry fly that is nice and bushy, like a Royal Wulff. In these conditions you might want to drop back to a 7 1/2 ft leader.

Another reason you might want to use a short leader is if you are fishing in a smaller mountain brook. You won’t be casting long distances and a shorter leader will allow you to get more of the fly line out to carry the cast.

by Mark Waldin Flycatcher — You might think that the advantage of casting a rod that is 1/2 oz lighter than another is better because it is less strain on your body. This is not the main reason a lighter rod is better.

A lighter rod is inherently good because it means that less of your casting energy is going back into the rod and more is going into your line.

Consider that you are casting a line that weighs maybe 150 grains, basically the equivalent of  150 grains of oats.    In ounces, it weighs 1/3 of an ounce!  When you cast a line your fly rods energy goes into the line AND the rod itself and it does it proportionally.  If the mass of the bent portion of the fly rod was equal to the weight of the line, half the casting energy would go back into the rod and half into the line.  The lighter the rod relative to the line, the more energy will go into the line.  The longer your casts will be.

by Mark Waldin Flycatcher — Should you always use the line weight recommended by the fly rod or rod blank manufacturer? Remember that casting a fly is an art form that involves skill, technique, and preference. A fly rod manufacturer specs a fly rod based on their taste and perceived user’s skill level. If you aren’t in the sweet spot of the manufacturer’s targeted user you might find their recommended fly line weight isn’t exactly what you need. Over lining the rod (putting a line weight one higher than the fly rod is rated for) may be just the ticket.

Some fast or very fast action rods may be designed with the expert fly fishing caster in mind. Getting a very fast fly rod to perform to it’s potential can be difficult for a novice or intermediate fly caster that doesn’t have the timing, speed, and rhythm to shoot such a line repeatedly. Such a person might choose to purchase a slower rod that fits their current comfort zone. Nothing wrong with that as long as the fly fisherman is willing to live with the knowledge that they may over time be wishing they had the faster rod (once they outgrow the rod) or they might become stagnant so that they’ll never grow into a fast rod.

Another approach to such a situation is to over line the fly rod by increasing the line weight by one. Doing this will slow the rod down a bit, require less line to be in the air, and make casting easier. Sure, the fly fisherman isn’t going to get optimal performance out of the rod doing this (unless over lining it for other reasons…more in future articles on this topic) but it does eliminate the issues I referred to above.

The fly fisherman gets a rod that stretches his/her capabilities but in a manageable way. It provides a learning platform to grow on. It preserves the investment further into the future. When you are looking at fly rods or testing their feel and responsiveness, don’t get caught in a rut. Push the envelope and experiment. You may be pleasantly surprised.

by Mark Waldin Flycatcher — Its the stupid mistakes that will frustrate you the most. That is especially true when the mistake is expensive, and this one is.

You have found the spine on each section of your fly rod blank and marked each section for the spine location. You have reamed your cork grip for fit on the butt section. You have just finished gluing the grip and the fly rod reel seat into place. Don’t forget to align the reel seat’s reel pocket with the spine of the rod! Once the glue has cured it is too late to fix it and you have just built yourself a rod that is going to perform in a sub-optimal way. Worse than that is that you will know it and you will never truly enjoy using that fly rod on the water.

I suggest building a check list of actions that need to be taken in sequence order. As you are building your fly rod check each action off as it occurs. It is best to have a very tangible action you have to take so that you don’t miss one. For this potential mistake I suggest you attach a fly rod reel to the fly rod after you have set the grip and reel seat. It is a very hands on and visual act, plus it let’s you set the spine exactly where it belongs.

by Mark Waldin Flycatcher — Ever find a cork grip quality grading system? Is it A, AA, AAA, Flor? You probably have seen all of these quality gradations but do you know what they mean and do you know what you are getting when you buy one? Probably not.

There is NO grading system for cork quality. Cork comes from the cork tree and the majority of it is grown in Portugal. Moreover, the major use of cork is for wine bottles. There is no government agency or otherwise that has come up with a grading system for cork. I even corresponded with the Portugal Cork Association to confirm this.

To get a quality cork grip that is worth the price (and they aren’t cheap!) buy from a reputable supplier that stands behind their claims. Remember that the grip is one aspect of a rod that has both high aesthetic qualities, high functional value, and takes a lot of abuse. Don’t rely on any supplier’s made-up grading system.

I’ve started doing some deep research on fly fishing news articles on the Internet. I’ve used Google News. I’ve used general searches. I’ve used feed readers of various kinds. I even investigated Second Life where you can create another world of imaginary people and interact with them. One thing that I’ve noticed in my wanderings is that news and fly fishing are almost antithetical.

Most of the stuff that passes itself off as news is nothing more than self-promotion. I ran across one article about how great a new Sage rod was and I couldn’t find an author or a source. Hmmm…. Think someone at Sage posted it themselves? I do.

The more I look at the newsworthiness of fly fishing, the more comfortable I am with the sport. Like an old shoe that just seems to fit better than all the others, fly fishing is something to be worn. In a world of fast paced technology and blindingly quick obsolescence fly fishing is a sanctuary.

No, fly fishing is no more of a news reporters game than wild rice. And that’s a good thing. Because when I fly fish I want to slow down and blend in. I want to get lost. I want to know that time can stand still if we just let it. In a world that isn’t exciting enough that people feel the need to create a Second Life I am headed the opposite direction. I guess you could say that fly fishing is my Second Life.

Mark Waldin, Flycatcher– when you wrap your fly rod guides, don’t use your drag mechanism to create tension for wrapping. Set the drag so that it provides more tension than you want during the wrapping. Pull a length of thread through the drag (by pulling the rod toward you so tension is kept on the fly rod wrap) and then wrap the fly rod by rolling it, taking up thread that you have already pulled through the drag mechanism. Doing this allows YOU to be in control of the amount of tension applied and increases your overall control of the wrap quality.

Don’t apply too much tension. You want your wraps to be snug but not overly tight. Making them overly tight can cause several frustrating difficulties. It makes it more difficult to snug wraps up tight against each other. It becomes especially difficult to snug wraps over the guide foot. It can make it difficult to pull the thread loop through the wraps when you go to finish off the wrapping.

Excessively tight wraps do not increase the strength of the secured fly rod guide. Thread acts like a lot like re-bar in concrete. Just like steel bars sitting in concrete reinforce it, the threads in guide epoxy reinforce the epoxy.

Mark Waldin, Flycatcher –The US National Fly Fishing Championships, NFFC, finished three days of intense fly fishing competition yesterday.

Summing it up, Eddie Pinkston in an interview with the Daily Camera, said, “This is really made for those fishermen who are in their prime, but have still had enough experience on the water.”

But I have to ask the question, “is fly fishing really a competitive sport?”. Oh sure, there is always room for bragging rights for the ‘fish that got away’ or ‘the fight of a lifetime’. Those are great kick back tales over a beer but not really competition.

Perhaps I’m old fashioned or just too much of an outdoors man. To me fly fishing is more about being out in nature, becoming one with the countryside, absorbing the environment. Its about me and the fish. Its a game of hide and seek, of reading the tea leaves, and of out smarting my competitor. Its personal and sacred.

In an era of Nintendo and X-Box do we really need to turn fly fishing into yet another competitive event?

What do you think?

A couple days ago I zero balance tuned two identical St Croix SCIII fly rod blanks. Same length, same weight, same model, even came in the same shipment. Different results. Optimal placement of the fly rod guides was different by almost an inch and a half with one rod needing all the guides shifted back toward the butt compared to the other. Distance between guides varied significantly as well.

Here were the number in inches from the tip:

Each individual fly rod blank has it’s own characteristic. Optimal performance is gained by treating each one separately and building the rod holistically. St Croix builds very nice rods but they build lots of rods. They can’t take the time to treat each blank as an individual. That is why custom rod builders like Flycatcher exist. That is why hobbiest craftsmen build there own fly rods.

The best way for a hobbiest to determine guide placement on a custom crafted rod is through Flycatcher’s Zero Balance rod tuning. Without access to that, then make sure you DO NOT use guide placement charts. They don’t work. Place the guides on the rod temporarily. String the line on the rod. Flex the rod and adjust the placement of each guide individually to get the line to follow the rod bend as best you can.

You can have a rod that beats the one’s available off the shelf.

Is that an odd question? Is there such a thing as having a stripper guide placed wrong? Placement of a stripper guide is dictated by two things a) stripping and b) casting. For stripping, you want the guide to be at a distance up the fly rod in such a way that when you reach to strip fly line your hand is not over reaching and wanting to grab line beyond the stripper. The more line you can strip in faster the better. Consequently, you want the fly rod’s stripper to be a good distance out.

You also want the fly rod to flex properly during the casting stroke. For that you want the fly line to follow the natural ’stressed contour’ of the rod. To optimize this, you want the stripper as far down the rod toward the reel seat as is comfortable for you. This will help assure that the rod is loading properly and you are getting maximum distance.

For my money, the best thing to do is to get a rod where the stripper is at a comfortable distance for stripping but NO MORE than this. When I build a custom rod I change the distance to the stripper based on the length of the customer’s arm. A typical range for butt to stripper guide can be anywhere from 28″ to 32″.

Where is your stripper guide?

Mark Waldin
Flycatcher

Here’s a tip for wrapping thread on your guides so you get a nice even wrap. Start your wrapping so that the thread comes off your tension mechanism and wraps over the top of your rod, not under the rod. Keep the rod at a slight angle to your feed mechanism, only a 10 degree angle or so. You will have better visibility on how the thread is feeding onto rod, will be able to more easily keep the thread from overlapping existing winds, and will be able to wrap quicker.

Mark Waldin
Flycatcher

As I created this blog and posted it, it occurred to me that many of my fly fishing buddies out there are a lot more interested in fly fishing, fly rods, flies, and tackle than they are technology. Who has time to or better yet who cares about all this technology. I’ll bet most of you are reading this blog and don’t even know what a blog is. Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is how you can use this technology to keep up with interesting things going on in the world of fly fishing and fly rods easily without trying to visit a dozen sites. It’s called an RSS Feed reader and it is another term you can forget about. But what it does is marvelous. It grabs all the news on fly fishing from all the sites on the internet and brings them together in one place, like a newspaper, where you can browse easily and read what you want.

Here is how you do it. Go to http://reader.google.com If you do not have a Google account you will need to create one. You now have an RSS Feed reader. Simple, huh? Next step, find sites you want fly fishing news from. On the left side of Google Reader you will see a box with a plus (+) sign at the top and Add Subscription next to it. To the right of that is the word Browse. Click on browse and you will be on a page with “Search and Browse” at the bottom. Type “fly fishing” in the box and hit “search for feeds”. You will now see lots of articles about fly fishing. Look at ones that seem interesting or come from a web site that is of interest to you and select “Subscribe”. The source for that article will now be added to your news subscriptions on the reader page.

If you happen to go to a fly fishing or fly rod site and want to add its news to your reader, look for “RSS Feed” somewhere on the page. Click on it. You will see a
“Subscribe to this feed using” box. Select Google from the drop down and click “Subscribe”. Your new Fly Fishing site will now start feeding you news in real time.

Pretty slick, huh? Try it and leave a comment on how well it works for you!

Mark Waldin
Flycatcher