It is so easy that you will find it just about as hard as hitting the ground if you fell down.
For over one hundred years fly fishermen have been fishing this way and for good reason.
Right at the start I want to say I am going to wax a bit and perhaps rant a bit but…
This is not just my opinion.
Fly fishing is old. Modern salt water fly fishing is ne.
Fly fishing grew out of many people learning lots of things about nature and fish and water and flow and put names on things like drag and dead drift and wet fly swings and dry flies and streamers and leaders and all sorts of words that we all kind of are familiar with even if we may not be aware of their origins.
The single thing that allowed fly fishing to become fly fishing as we know it. The single thing that was critical for fly fishing to develop, the thing that without it being invented fly fishing s we know it would not exist was this.
The silk line that when greased floated.
That was the invention of the wheel in fly fishing. Without it there is no modern fly fishing.
Sound strange? It is simply true and in all branches of fly fishing this is known except salt water fly fishing.
What difference does it make?
A very fundamental one.
Only through leaning what a floating line is and how to use it can one become a fly fishing master and that is the simple truth.
Only in modern Salt water fly fishing is this truth disregarded and that is only because of ignorance of the value of what kind of a tool it actually is not because of knowledge of something that supersedes it. IT cannot be superseded as it is like the number one or the letter A. IT is the basic root of fly fishing and without it there is no root in fly fishing. The lineage is aborted and there is nothing to build on.
Fly fishing becomes something else more similar to lure fishing and conventional fishing.
IT becomes cast and retrieve or cast and strip disregarding current and drag and mending and line control which set fly fishing apart from all the other forms of fishing with artificial lures. The methodology is conventional. You can fish with a fly with a spinning outfit with a sinker or a casting weight and catch fish very well indeed. Is it fly fishing?
It is using flies for sure but is it fly fishing?
Casting a fly rod doe’s not mean one is fly fishing. Casting a fly with conventional gear does not mean one is fly fishing. You can hit a golf ball with a baseball bat but that does not mean one is playing golf nor does hitting a basket ball with a tennis racket mean one is playing basketball.
Fly fishing is presentation in current. That is the root of it.
You can fish in ponds and all sorts of places and that is good but the root of fly fishing is current and presentation.
What happened is someone invented the floating line and from that moment on fishing in current with control of the line and fly became possible. Not before but after. It is the critical factor. This is not a matter of semantics but rather a root understanding that is necessary if someone want to become a fly fisherman that can communicate and understand other fly firemen everywhere in the whole world. For instance…
If you make a statement like this when talking on line to a Scottish Salmon fisherman,
“I always use an intermediate because it is just as good as a floating line,” you have communication breakdown discordance. He may say what about drag? You may answer, "What’s that"? He knows from that moment that you are not a knowledgeable fly fisherman at all but he will probably think that he misunderstood you. He may say,” How do you fish it?” You may answer I cast across stream and strip it in or you may say I cast and let it swing and then juggle it a bit and then hand over hand it in.
He may then ask, “So... Why do you use that line instead of a floating line?
What will you say?
“Because I want the flies to fish deeper.” He will not understand that. Or perhaps you say, “The fish are on the bottom and I want to bring the fly closer to them.” He will not understand that either. He may say, “What about drag"?
The point I am trying to make is that there is a language that can only be learned through knowing what a floating line is capable of and if you do not know that then you are not a fly fisherman in the classic meaning of the word even though you fish with flies. You are hitting a golf ball with a hockey stick and he will not understand you within the shared meaning of classic understanding of fly fishing methodology. He will understand that you fish with flies and cast and strip them in all situations. He will be curious as to why you fish that way and wonder how you got started in fly fishing and never learned the fundamentals of presentation.
Only in the last decade plus a little bit (and only in salt water, the most isolated from traditional fly rod anglers [sorry guys] as a group) has the use of intermediates and sink lines, been anything other than a limited specialty solution. That is not my opinion by the way. It is fact.
That is kind of strange you might think and perhaps wonder if it was for the reason that those new lines, those that went beneath the surface, were a better solution to fishing with streamers in most situations.
It would seem so at a cursory glance.
The fact of how that happened is different however. The use of sinking lines as a first choice in salt water was completely created out of the ether by marketing them as such not through traditional developed experience. That was completely ignored in the frenetic craze to get product on the shelves to satisfy the surging the salt water market.
People wanted to fish in the ocean and there was not a salt water fly shop or magazine to be found and they had to be created quickly and they were and product lines were developed to satisfy the demand for rods and lines and destinations and flies and all the rest of it and it happened almost overnight.
The salt water starting out outfit was created.
It consisted of a nine foot nine weight rod, a pair of waders, a stripping basket and an intermediate line. And casting lessons.
If you wanted something different you could not get it as it did not exist.
That is all that every shop carried and that all that every manufacturer and brand new salt water fly shop promoted.
That in a nutshell is the root of modern salt water fly fishing.
It did not break with tradition it did not even notice that there was one or choose to notice it as there were clients to satisfy with products that they wanted to buy.
The business of fly fishing created modern salt water fly fishing to buy products that they scrambled to make and had available to sell and set the standards of what people would use for equipment. The root to fly fishing tradition and presentation was completely disregarded.
It was expedient and it made perfect business sense to do that and I would have done the same as a manufacturer. The demand for product to sell was there grinding its teeth.
Marketing created salt water fly fishing norms not tradition.
Its root is marketing.
There is a fundamental disjuncture between modern fly fishing in Salt water and the rest of fly fishing including traditional fly fishing in salt water as they have a different root.
I am connected to the pre boom salt water fly fishing root which has the same root as all types of fly fishing- Presentation.
That is the mastery of all dimensions of the handling of a floating line. Shallow, deep, mid water, dead drift, with weight, with droppers, surface, wet fly swings, greased line swings, weight on the leader, floating flies, drag, mending, spey, nymphing, streamers, big flies, casting and on and on. Cast and strip too.
The basic tool that created fly fishing as we know it is knowing how to fish all types of water with a floating line.
You cannot bypass that knowledge and be rooted in the fullness of fly fishing knowledge. Presentation with a floating line is the tap root that connects salt water fly fishing to traditional fly fishing wisdom and history.
That clerk in the fly shop who was told by his boos to move those products did a great job did he not? He created a whole world of fly fishing completely separate from its origin.
So now what do we have?
There is a place for sinking lines and I love them as a matter of fact and I use them often but always with a specific traditional reason.
They are not all purpose lines at all and were not created to be all purpose that is marketing again and never will be.
The reason for that is simple.
In fly fishing there is one factor that determines almost everything that happens beneath the surface no matter what the fly is or the leader or the invisibility of the line or anything else is and that basic factor is well known in the larger world of fly fishing and in every part of it - except salt water fly fishing. That one factor is drag.
You have to factor in drag if you want to become a master fly fisherman.
Can you catch fish in salt water without factoring it in?
Yes you can. You can also catch fish with a spinning rod by casting and reeling in a lure (or a fly) over and over again. You will catch fish and sometimes when the fish are aggressive and chasing bait you may catch a lot of them. Casting and reeling and casting and stripping have great entertainment value.
Does it teach you anything?
Yes, it teaches you that you can catch fish that way and sometimes very well.
That is enough for lots of people and that in and of itself is good.
If that is what you want out of fly fishing to be satisfied then by all means stick with cast and strip or cast and swing with sinking lines. Continue fishing for entertainment.
IF you want more then perhaps it is time to consider and perhaps to engage the difficulties presented by learning about drag and intelligent presentation.
It is a choice either choice is good and so are both choices together. The third point of reference.
Imagine that that fly fishing is only cast and strip with sinking lines.
What would that world of fly fishing look like? Think about that for a couple of seconds and the absurdity of that reality becomes apparent.
There would be a dumbed down counterfeit fly fishing imposter substituting for the richness of fly fishing tradition.
That is what actually has happened in one branch of fly fishing, Modern salt water fly fishing is that interloper. It has a place but not as the main character in the play.
It has a bit part to play and that part is very important and very limited but it can be expanded with the knowledge of the main character. Mr. Presentation.
To enter into the tradition of fly fishing and learn about drag and all the forms of presentation and the true value of floating lines and how to use sinking lines in a way that they are useful and not a placebo because of ignorance but rather a good tool to use when needed and why they are needed and when and how to use them efficiently because you understand the effect of drag on your line and leader and fly because you learned them by engaging the use of a floating line is wise indeed.
All the great masters on the fly rod fish deep with floating lines as their first choice.
There are no short cuts. I mean the real great masters not the flash in the pan ones or the showmen types but the solid ones whose writings have lasted through the years because what they spoke of and about are the ways of nature and the natural forces we live with and in. Those kinds of masters not media entertainment celebrities who endorse product lines
Haig Brown states clearly that using a floating line in big deep fast rivers for steelhead he can easily touch bottom in fifteen feet of water and fish his fly perfectly at that depth with a floating line and an un-weighted fly.
Who do you want to believe? I know he is telling the truth because all the writings of the masters can be repeated by you. That is what makes them real. They are real.
The guy who was told by the 18 year old clerk to buy an intermediate line because it was the basic line for the salt and then told the next guy and so on for several years and spread the word. “Everybody uses them so it must be the right way to go.”
Stop listening to him and repeating his sales pitch.
Not everybody believed him. The old timers never bought into that modern marketing sales pitch at all.
Imagine a clerk on the Beaverkill telling the old time trout guys that they had to use sinking lines to catch the nymphing trout. What do you think?
Of course if the sales clerk told a bunch of brand new fly fisherman with absolutely no experience that that was the norm...
And from that moment on that was all they heard what do you think would have happened?
Intermediate lines would have become the standard basic line on the Beaverkill for trout fishing.
The sinking line trance is so pervasive in salt water that it is kind of ridiculous and actually sets apart the market educated anglers or the modern anglers from the older knowledgeable ones from the get go.
An old timer knows that he cannot help someone fish who is using a sinking line where he could not so he avoids contact and conversation when fishing. He does not doubt himself or his ability he know an aberration when he sees one.
Back to the Beaverkill.
Imagine yourself fishing a pool with rising trout and some one coming along all duded up and tying on his dry fly and casting next to you with an intermediate line and when you ask why he is using it? He looking at you quizzically and says, “It is as good as a floater.”
Seem absurd?
That is how absurd it is for some of us who have been fly fishing in the ocean for decades when we are joined by a modern sinking line fly fisherman who only fishes one way even though he does not know that.
If you do engage in conversation, you hear name dropping, so and so says this and this company is making that and all sorts of hearsay and blather about new products and everything and anything except an understanding of drag or line control and no intelligent technique for getting the fly at the right depth or with control of that depth and...
How do you begin to communicate when someone’s head is full of hearsay dysfunctional ideas that they learned not by fishing but by trying to fish like everybody else does?
Either you smile and say wow. Or tell him where the big ones are or you walk away and shake your head or perhaps you do what I do. You tell them what they ask truthfully and watch their eyes glaze over and have them walk away shaking their head and feeling sorry for you.
I am a dinosaur I guess but my species is not going to become extinct.
You do not need a strike indicator but you can use one.
The flies will not pull the line under - if you mend. You may want to use a strike indicator to keep certain flies near the surface film like during a clam worm hatch or a shrimp fly when the fish are only taking flies in the top inch of water and will not take a fly six inches down because they are not looking there but only at the film. You may also want to use one when the fish are blitzing on tiny sand eels on top at dusk as that works much better than any sinking line method by about twenty fish to one. Use tiny sparse flies not those stiff stick ones made out of tubing. Test that out for yourself by using droppers and putting both types of flies on the same leader and letting the fish choose the flies they like.
That is the best solution for culling the popular flies that sell well but do not work well and do not work at all out of your fly box...
The use of tools, which a strike indicator is, is up to you. It is not necessary to use one to compensate for any dysfunction within a floating line.
The end of a fly line is a strike indicator.
Also; and I can not emphasize this enough. Your vision is not your main sense at night. Your sense of feel, of touch will tell you how your line is acting and how your flies are fishing and the back pressure from your line and flies in the water develops your sense of feel to a very dependable and sophisticated connection to what is happening at the end of your line and all the parts in between. You do not need to desensitize yourself to hat feel with any crutch.
That ability to truly feel what is happening out there in the darkness may not be something you can relate too right now but it doesn't take long to develop the feel of fishing at night at all. Thousands of striper fishermen have developed it with all kinds of tackle and none of them use their eyes or find the need to want to use their eyes because that is counter productive to developing that sense of feel.
It is like anything else you learn by jumping in and doing it not by being indecisive and wanting everything that is unknown to be known before you experience it.
You have to eat the soup to know what it tastes like.
All I can say is it is good soup.
It feels good to eat it.
Cast and strip with sinking lines is a bit of spice that you can use now and then but I for one find it boring as hell compared to good presentation and all the many doors that open once you engage learning about drag and how to use it to your advantage.
You can only learn that by learning how to fish with the basic fly fishing line.
The floater.
Everything else is good but it is not the main course only various specialty side dishes.
A steady diet of hot doges is boring at least to me and to all the old masters it is cast and strip and cast and swing with a sinking line has its place but not as the main course.
Fast food fly fishing is what salt water fly fishing needs to shake itself out of right now.
Time for it to engage its history and the wealth it has ignored because of the merchandising of the quick fix.
The tree was bent at birth and has grown askew.
IT can be straightened.
The last think I want to say is this; and it takes discipline.
Every hit that does not result in a hookup is a dull hook.
A hook has to be so sharp that it is sticky to the tough. Anything less will result in hits with no fish.
All the stories to the contrary are excuses that have very little meaning.
A hit is a dull hook period.
You have to sharpen them yourself and catching a fish will take the edge off and you have to sharpen it again.
A hit or a fish. It is in your will to have either.
Well is it a rant or was it worth sharing.
I hope somebody enjoyed it.
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