S5, Ep 96: Fly Line Essentials with Mac Brown

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly, back with another fly line essentials with Mac Brown. How you doing, Mac?

Mac Brown: I'm doing great. How are you, Marvin?

Marvin Cash: 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 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 Brown: 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 Cash: Yeah. And so when we talk about the front taper. Right. We can basically have what we say when it's aggressive, and that's really how quickly it steps down. Right. And the more aggressively it steps down, the more acceleration you have. And there are just certain use cases where you want that in a presentation. Right?

Mac Brown: Yeah. Like in a bass bug taper with a big frog pattern made of deer hair with a lot of air resistance. That would be a very good thing to have it abrupt in the front. Very short and abrupt. So it'll turn that over easily. And then think about on a trout stream, throwing an Elk Hair Caddis, with 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 small dry fly.

Marvin Cash: Right. Yeah. So you want something that wasn't quite as severe. And 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 aerial real estate to work your mojo. And so that can help you load the rod too, right?

Mac Brown: That's right. It'll help you load it up quicker.

Marvin Cash: Yeah.

Mac Brown: If you don't have much outside the tip.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And then, of course, we could always go down the rat hole and talk about how you need heavier lines for faster rods. But we may be here all night if we do that, right?

Mac Brown: Oh, yeah, we better stay away from that one.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so yeah, go ahead.

Mac Brown: Well, it's just so many of them have gotten faster and it's gotten so out of control. And AFTMA came up with that in '59 from Myron Gregory with the line designations, how much of a 3-weight to first 30 feet, 100 grains and so on. You get to the 5-weight being 140, that leaves you the next number in between, a 4-weight, 120. And with the rods becoming so much stiffer 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 somebody needs to step in and make some regulations on not just lines, but the rods, too. The rods ought to have a designation to be called a 5-weight versus an 8-weight versus a 3-weight.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. So 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 Brown: 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 going to address shooting heads. We're going to 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, heavy. It's like 20 feet to maybe 25 feet of a head. And you're trying to throw this thing to 300 feet. I mean, that's what they do a lot in the 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. Then it gets to the skinny shooting line. After that transition's been made, the cast has been launched, and then we can get really 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're going to have a better transition.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And I think, too, right, having a longer back taper on the head is going to let you... it's going to make it easier for you to mend line, right?

Mac Brown: Absolutely. Yeah. Because you'll be able to have greater... just take an aerial mend, make a forward cast, reach out, reach back. You can control very easily left and right curves with 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. So I mean, if it's a smoother transition, that'll work much better than having an abrupt taper back there.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And I think the other thing we were talking about before we started recording too, is you kind of have to in your head, and the manufacturers have started 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 SA has got color coding where the running line is a different color from the head. And when you see that you're close to the end of the head, you know it's time to launch the cast. Right?

Mac Brown: That's right. Yeah. That's been really a big improvement the last bunch of years where they went to these... where the color was actually visible, because before they did that, 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. Makes it a lot easier.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. 100%. So when we kind of translate this front and back taper and length of the head to the buying decision in the shop... there's probably... I mean, we could really get crazy with it. But 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 Brown: I think so. And I think that would be the best way to do it. And 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 of the catalogs were still pushing a lot of DT lines. And I just like it better because if you want to 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 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.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, but that also means, right, that you have to take ownership of managing the line performance with your leader design. Right?

Mac Brown: That's right. I use a lot of long, really long leaders. So with that setup, and that's why I prefer long, really long leaders. And a lot of times people ask me, oh my gosh, that's really ridiculously long. Well, if you think about it, I'm gonna explain it 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 D loop, which means it's in motion 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 got the same 15 feet 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 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 setup for DT lines. And then once somebody plays with that, they'll be like, my gosh, this is easy. But yes, I think it's just a different twist.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And I would say so if most people are fishing a seven and a half to nine-foot leader, maybe 12, give or take. 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 there's very little change from the back of the line to the front of the line in terms of diameter. So you get a really smooth acceleration 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.

Mac Brown: Right, right. Yeah. The DT is a great distance line.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And then 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 Brown: That's right.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And so back to what we're talking about earlier, how aggressive you're dropping down that front taper is really how aggressive that turnover is. And so 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. For example... Yeah. Or like, for example, I really like the SA. I think it used to be the GPX. I think now it's the MPX line that's such a good line for like short trout fishing. Right. Because it loads rods well too. Right?

Mac Brown: Oh, yeah. And we can't leave out the famous bobber lobber technique. 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 an indicator and for indicator rigs. So I mean, that's also a big plus for that.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. And then kind of to come back to your hypothetical with the double taper and the roll cast, a way to kind of get in between that, kind of cheat is the triangle taper, right?

Mac Brown: Yeah, that's a great line. That was the brainchild from Lee Wulff years ago. And it is a great roll casting line as well. And of course it's bleeding off energy because it's the tapers reduced. 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 anytime that the mass is being reduced so the fat parts 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 dry fly presentation. It's going to make it a good roll casting line. It's going to be nice for 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 taper trying to be a big distance caster and it's not going to go very far. And 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 Cash: Yeah, got it. But it's a great small creek line.

Mac Brown: Oh, I love it for small streams. And if it's 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 size 22, 24 spinners. Just like we're fishing a tailwater, but we're fishing wild streams coming out of the national park. So that's a fantastic line for doing that.

Marvin Cash: And we want to give a shout out to our friends at Scientific Anglers who are generously sponsoring the series. And 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 you in a drawing for a signed copy of Mac's book Casting Angles. And then we're going to have a Q and 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 SA line of your choice. So get the questions in. And 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 fly line care. And then I think we'll probably do our Q and A. But I think that's what we've got on tap, Mac Brown.

Mac Brown: That sounds like a good plan, Marvin.

Marvin Cash: Well, 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, Mac.

Mac Brown: Tight lines, Marvin.