Once upon a time, someone gave me a fly rod & reel after I mentioned that I wanted to learn to how flyfish. Years later, I finally had the opportunity to take a class through the local forest preserve to learn how to use the thing and, of course, I ended up picking up new gear. This lead to setting up yet another kit for yet another hobby, though technically I never had a proper kit for the first fly rod. Based on what I\u2019ve read in past and present, decisions (right or wrong) were made. Here\u2019s what I assembled and why.<\/p>\n
Your gamefish of choice will dictate which kind of rod you should buy. Usually, I’m fishing for panfish like blue gills and small mouth (“smallies”) are all landable with a 5 weight rig. The fly rod I bought was a Browning 4 piece 5-6 weight because my casting instructor recommended it as a traveling rid. I was intrigued by the idea of having a small kit I could reasonable take everywhere I thought there would be an opportunity to fish.<\/p>\n
Selecting a reel was harder. I finally elected to go with an Orivs Battenkill II<\/a>, which will handle 3-5 weight line. First, I sorted through the chinese offerings from Amazon, as well as higher quality offerings from Bass Pro Shops & Cabela’s. While Bass Pro’s were better quality reels then Amazon\u2019s chinese offerings, the reels were ~$60-70, cast aluminum and had disc drag systems. Looking at the offerings as an engineer, the Battenkill enticed me because it is made from solid bar stock (instead of castings), and a mechanically simple click and pawl drag system versus a disc drag. I believe the mechanically simple click & pawl, milled bar stock reel would be stronger & more durable then a cast reel with a disc drag of equivalent price. I also feel that the price was reasonably fair. The Reddington Fly Reel Zero<\/a> gave me pause but I decided on the Battenkill for the same reason I don\u2019t like glocks – plastic is for tupperware. I should note that the reel came set up as a left handed retrieve and I left it this way. My favored spincast, the Zebco 11t is also configured this way. A note – with this rod and reel combo, I can \u201ccheat\u201d down to 4 weight line on the rod or \u201ccheat\u201d up to 6 weight line on the reel which is a pretty comfortable range all things considered.<\/p>\n Then I had to select backing, fly line, leaders, and tippets. I would recommend using a dacron backing line and finally settled on some RIO backing from Ebay comparing price & shipping times. I had considered using mono as backing, but after purchasing dacron I’m a convert. Also, while researching the idea I found that the expansion of mono will cause damage to the spool. The dacron line is a bit like embroidery floss and bites the fly line better then mono could dream of. I only put roughly 1\/2 the spool of backing on as I had seen some recommendations in my Orvis book to do so. Panfish are unlikely to run a 90′ length of fly line I think, but even 150′ of dacron backing should be more then enough.<\/p>\n For my fly line, I chose a weight forward, floating line in 5 weight. Typically, the floating line is considered the most flexible across the different applications of fly lines. Weight forward is good casting material for beginner and experienced alike per the Orvis book. I have read that sinking is recommended for panfish, my intended quarry, but I think I can compensate for this with my leader easily enough. If not, I’ll try a roll of sinking line then. I went with the White River due to the low cost of the line. I actually thought it was 90 yds … don’t be an idiot like me. The battenkill has enough capacity for the full 90′ spool of fly line. Unlike my last roll of fly line, the backing end was labeled.<\/p>\n For a leader, I will be making furled leaders of 6\/0 unithread. I\u2019m going to make a separate blog post on the construction of furled leaders but you can see the general idea by checking out these furled leaders on ebay<\/a>. I decided on furled leaders because of the relatively low cost of raw materials. Several leaders can be made from a single roll of unithread. To keep the leaders from getting tangled during storage I 3d printed some leader holders that I found on Thingiverse<\/a>.<\/p>\n I’ll use a piece of simple 2lb test monofilament as a tippet. I haven’t seen a reason not to.<\/p>\n I did buy a fly fishing vest, and went with one that is 100% cotton. Realize that fishing is likely to impart a certain fishy smell dirty done right. While the newer nylon vests are neat, they won’t handle a washer & dryer like a good cotton vest will. I also figured that being a germophobe I would want to was the vest often enough. I found a lightly used offering on Ebay. $20 later it was mine and it arrived in a few days. Until I get my preferences settled out, I do tend to buy a cheap. No need to buy twice cry twice because I couldn’t try it out in a store.<\/p>\n There are many different knots that need to be used to put a fly reel together. Here is the list, sorted from the reel to the tippet. These are the knots recommended by my LL Bean Fly Fishing book I purchased.<\/p>\n I’m not saying that I made the right decisions, but I feel that this kit has as much ability to catch a fish as the next. That’s what I’m after. If its sub-optimal then there’s a good chance its user preference and not something I can find in a book or youtube videos online. I’ll leave a list of my complete kit below, as well as some recommended resources. Thanks for reading.<\/p>\n Once upon a time, someone gave me a fly rod & reel after I mentioned that I wanted to learn to how flyfish. Years later, I finally had the opportunity to take a class through the local forest preserve to learn how to use the thing and, of course, I ended up picking up new… <\/p>\nTying it All Together<\/h2>\n
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Final Thoughts<\/h2>\n
Complete Outfit<\/h2>\n
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Recommended Resources<\/h2>\n
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