Ideal Flymph Rig

[flyfishwithme]

Good dialogue everyone. Now I am going to be a little 'out there' and assume that 'flymph' also equals 'soft hackle' also equals 'spiders'. I am also going to tell you what I and a few others are doing here in the northern part of the UK.
To say that I am a 'spider' fanatic would be an under statement. I use them and I teach traditional techniques using them.
For some time I have felt that we should be using longer rods and longer leaders to fish soft hackles. My desire has been to keep the line away from the water whether I am fishing up, down or sideways.
So I moved from 8' to 10' and now I am at 11' with a 3wt rating. This rod, 'Italian made', is so light that it equals about a 8'6 4wt. Get the picture. It is even better than that as it has a 'medium' action. Just what we have all been discussing on this thread.
Historically, our forefathers used longer rods than that and also wanted to keep the line off the water to reduce drag and to 'work' the flies in the various currents and creases.
I am finding that with a longer rod I can do things which I only thought about earlier. So light weight longer rods are available. Some people I know are looking for even longer light weight rods.
But what about the rig, or leader as it is probably only the tippet end that you would 'rig' up additional flies. More of that later.
I have experimented with lots of leaders over the past season. As part of my personal fishing and while guiding clients who want to 'experiment'. Until now all have been satisfactory but still lacking something. The norm has been leaders pushing the 20' mark. On a 10' rod these are great but what if we went longer?
Recently, I have been developing a leader that approaches the 30' length and which can be cast like a line.
Now I use 3wt lines (silk or artificial silk) so you can immediately see that I am at a disadvantage because of line tip size (remember the rule 60:20:20 taper; butt 60% of line tip). Well I have over come that, so if you are interested in experimenting, here is what I have done.
1. Rather than try and make up a leader from scratch I purchased a 15' salmon leader with a 12lb tippet. This was a Rio with a butt thickness of .69mm and a tippet of .36mm. The interesting thing about this leader was that the butt was the same thickness at the 3wt silk line tip. 1st challenge. The tapered section of the tippet was 36". 2nd challenge - do I cut or extend? I chose the latter.
2. I then progessively added 36" sections coming down to 7x in .05mm reduction (which I consider the optimum reduction thickness). That meant:
36" of .28mm
36" of .23mm
36" of .18mm
36" of .13mm
This got me out to 27' without a tippet.
So I added 4' of .10mm (7x) to get an overall leader of 31'. This needed fine tuning so I removed 1' from the leader tippet, 6" from the .28mm section and 3" from the .23mm section but kept the rest.
The result was:
14'6" leader
30" of .28mm
33" of .23mm
36" of .18mm
36' of .13mm
48" of .10mm
to give an overall leader of 29' 9".
Interestingly, this seemed to layout well when cast with my hand.
Now to the 1st challenge. The butt section. I had a Roman Moser braided loop on my line (BTW I don't use super glue, I use Foo Goo as a means of making sure it doesn't slide off). so the natural thing o do was to work out if I could do a similar thing with the leader.
Remember that it was the same thickness of the line tip so there was some logic in the thinking. So I used a braided loop about 4" long (I wanted to be sure I had maximum grip) and slid it onto the leader using a little Foo Goo right under the sleeve on the non loop end. Worked fine.
What I achieved was almost a continuos taper right through to the tippet. And it cast okay with the longer rod and enabled me to keep about a 1' of line out of the tip and the rest (the leader) being fished. If I wanted to go shorter it is fine also because of the taper. Still early days BUT I got a benefit in that by placing some Fluoro Stren in one of the sections I got a very good upstream French nymph leader. I also make and sell Strike Indicators made of braided dacron. Adding one of these above the Stren I got a Czech nymph leader.
All a bit too versatile but never the less interesting.
Now I wanted to add droppers. I could have included them into the knots but I am reluctant to do that because if I wanted to reduce the number (or go to a single fly) and then add them back I would have to rebuild some of the tip section.
So what I do is to take a 12" piece of 6x tippet material, make a Perfection Loop in one end (I like to keep the loop to about 1" but you could go longer) and then loop it over the leader above the first knot from the tip. Got it? Visualise this, Assume that you have the leader horizontal and the loop is BEHIND the leader as you look at it. Take the tip and pull it through the loop around the leader and pull tight. The added advantage of this is that is stands at right angles to the leader. A bit like a Paternoster rig.
This can then slide down to the knot and can easily be removed at any time. Now make another and place it above the next section knot.
You end up with 2 droppers 3' apart. Perfect for spider fishing.
Now I have a 30' leader (or almost) with two droppers and it is perfect for a long rod.
As I said, I am still experimenting but I may just have hit on the perfect 'soft hackle' rig.

[Slate_Drake_9]

Phillip,

What company is making this 11' 3 weight. It sounds interesting.

[Ron Eagle Elk]

Phillip,

Do tell, what company makes that rod. As a tackle tart, I may have to have one, or two.

REE

[flyfishwithme]

Modern Flies make that rod. So do Loop ans as will Greys and Bloke Rods very soon.

[Slate_Drake_9]

Holy Crap! I found a site that sells the Modern Flies rod in question. $850!!! Do you know of a place to buy just the blank?

[flyfishwithme]

Hang in there, I am at the factory next month and that price may come down. And no, they do not sell blanks. You need to remember that these are very much specialist rods and mainly used by French and Czech nymphing experts. Applying them to 'spider' fishing is ew to them.

[Slate_Drake_9]

Yeah, I get that they're speciality rods, but so to can be said about the bamboo rods I have that are hand made by someone with a great pedigree that I can sell tomorrow for what I have into them, if not a profit. I'm just taken back by the price for a mass production rod, that's all.

[upstate tj]

Hi,
I am positive you will receive much information about this subject, and in my opinion, the answers you will get will be just that-opinions. Everyone has their favorite rig. I will say a few things, here that are my opinion.

You can use almost any weight line as long as it's matched with the rod, of course. People like lighter weights, but a 4, 5, or 6 weight is fine. Use the longest rod you dare for the place you will fish. This gives you more line control by having less line on the water. I feel medium action rods are best for fishing wingless wets, but it is getting more and more difficult to find a good medium action rod- or so it seems. Most rods are fast, nowadays. I really don't like them. They're too stiff for me.

For the most part, a floating line does the job, and under certain conditions (faster deeper water) I like a sinking line, or at least a sink tip to help get the fly down deeper, if that's what you want to do.

Leaders are a preference as well. I use my own hand-tied leaders using Maxima leader material. I've had no complaints about it. You can rig your leaders for fishing more than one fly, or just a good straight tapered leader for one fly at the point. Generally, I use a 9' leader, but increase the length as the water gets clearer and lower. I have used a 15' leader on some occasions.

I'm sure you will hear more from others, but what I've said here, would give anyone a good start at rigging up for fishing these flies.

Mark

I do not want to hijack the post so, I agree where are the good medium action rods? I am in the market for a reasonably priced fiberglass myself. I am looking for a six weight for lake run browns.

[GlassJet]

For a slower action rod, at a reasonable affordable price, check out Grey's Streamflex series. They're light, slower action and available in lengths to 10'.

Yup, I can vouch for the Streamflex - I recently 'inherited' a streamflex 8'6" #4 and it is a super rod. It won't usurp my own rod of a similar length and same weight (my great extravagance ) but i reckon for wet fly work on my small river, with a longer leader, and for Czech Nymphing come to that, a streamflex at 10' #4 would take some beating for the money.

Andrew.