Saltwater Tackle

The first thing to understand is that this "ain't Trout fishing..." and that fighting even a 4 or 5 pound salt water species like this Skipjack can put a lot of stress on your tackle.  You must have good connections all the way from the arbor of the reel to the fly and should understand where things can go wrong and why. An understanding of what characteristics of the fish make it necessary to put the system together in the way we do helps also.

To this end, these pages will discuss why pursuing saltwater fish species is different from pursuing their freshwater cousins.  We will present discussion and step by step instructions for building a reliable tackle system, the knots to use, and provide videos of each technique.  We offer information of how and why failures may occur in each discrete element of the tackle and discuss how to get the maximum casting range from your terminal tackle.

Consider why you might want to understand all of these pages; if you fail to properly set up your gear you will eventually pay the price. Given today’s prices you could spend:

• For a broken off fly (appx. $6)
• For a fly and commercially made leader (appx. $15)
• For the loss of a fly line and fly and leader(appx. $80)
• For the loss of all the above and the backing (appx. $120)

 

Now some of us may say that is not so much money. This may be true but if that line came off the only reel you have on the boat that day, then it gets quite a bit more expensive. You have now lost time fishing and the cost of the boat for the day (appx. $120 for the gear plus the cost of the boat and crew $$$ and maybe wasted sirfare???)

The key concept here is that ALL elements of you line system must have a breaking strength that exceeds that of the tippet. If something breaks it MUST be the tippet and not the leader, fly line, backing or any of the knots joining those elements to one another. So if someone is using 20 pound backing and 20 tippets they have a 50/50 chance of the backing breaking instead of the tippet. If they are using 20 pound backing and 30 pound tippets they are guaranteeing the loss of a fly line if a break occurs.

Also, knots must be properly tied and inspected upon tying to insure that they are firmly set. Proper knots should be used for connecting the different elements of the line system. Knot interference in the guides should be kept to a bare minimum to protect both the tippets and the tip of the rod. Not just any knot will do in any given situation.

We will show how to setup your line system in a way that you can maintains a 100% break strength system all the way to the tippet.

We will start at the reel arbor and work our way out to the fly showing each knot and connection. We will use braided loops to make connections from the backing to the fly line and from the fly line to the leader. Each of these 3 braided connections will exceed the breaking strength of the fly line, backing and the leader.

We will also show how to create inexpensive leaders that will turn your fly over even when using sinking fly lines, which usually have a very abrupt front taper. This type of front taper produces an hard turnover of the leader if you don’t have a well-designed leader. This abrupt turn-over creates a situation at the end of the fly line where the line will “dump” the leader and fly into a pile of slack line. This can cost as much as 12 to 15 feet in distance and loss of line control to the fly.