Your Fly Fishing Information Center!

Fly fishing requires more knots than most other forms of fishing where, generally, if you can tie your line to the hook you are golden.   In fly fishing, you need to connect your backing to the reel, then you need to connect the fly line to the backing, then the leader to the fly line,  then the tippet to the leader, and then you can tie your fly on the end of the tippet.  In the instructions for each knot, you will see why each one is vital for a specific purpose.  It is important to be able tie all of these knots, however, it is not necessary to memorize all of them.   I will explain the hows and whys of each knot and a little practice goes a long way.  There are several more knots that you can add to your arsenal, but the ones I have here will do just about everything required for fly fishing.  Most of these knots I've learned from a handy tool called The Fisherman's Ultimate Knot Guide by J.E. Sherry.  The man who taught me to fly fish insisted I purchase this folding, light weight knot guide and it has been in my vest for years.  Get one, you'll thank me later.

Product Review:  Venture Fly Reels

Made by:  G Loomis

These days, everyone is trying to maximize their dollar.  As I've mentioned in other articles, it has been a hard life lesson to learn "You Get What You Pay For."  Now, I still look for a deal, but  the quality of the product is just as important as the bottom line purchase price.  In fly fishing, faulty equipment equals lost fish.  The larger the fish, the more critical your fly reel is for the task.  At $100, the Venture fly reel by G. Loomis is the perfect reel for the budget minded angler.  It is inexpensive, but not cheap. 

What???  Free Flies???  Yup, you read it right.  We've had our forum up and running for a few months now, but we really haven't done our best to bring it to life.  Some of you have already left comments and asked questions and that is much appreciated.  We'd love to here from you more often so, here's the deal.  We are going to reward our most active Forum user for the month of July with a dozen hand picked and hand tied flies that I will personally tie at my fly tying bench.  The lucky winner will have a nice selection of my favorite flies that I use and that have been talked about here at DS Fly Fishing.  We look forward to hearing from you (no spam please.)   

Because of modern day technology, I believe there is very little difference between middle of the road fly reels and top end reels.  Fly fishing reels will run you from $15 to $1,000.  If you find a reel for under $50 (and a fly rod, for that matter) it will probably catch fish, but generally it will be most effective as a decoration.

The Basics:

Keep this in mind; most trout taken on a fly rod are hooked within 25 feet of the fisherman.  It is a lot easier to cast short distances like this for the beginner, so, don’t be intimidated by what is overemphasized as being the most important aspect to fly fishing - fly casting.  Later I’ll talk a little bit about different casting problems and the skills needed to improve all around casting. But, for the beginner, it should take just a little practice to effectively cast a fly short distances.  Before you experienced Anglers start tearing me a new one here I am suggesting that it takes more than great casting to catch fish.  A beautiful and accurate 80 foot cast will do you no good if there is drag on your drift and you are using the wrong fly.  So, since casting is a necessity of fly fishing, let’s talk about the basics of getting the fly to the trout.  Oh, yeah, you will need a fly rod.