Tag: flyfishing

Staying dry this summer

Flyfishers eagerly anticipate the warmer weather, when the fish are ‘looking up’, in search of insects on the water surface. We carefully apply floatant to our flies, and do our best to dry them in between ‘drownings’ in the mouth of a fish, or the swirl of a turbulent stream. Eventually, despite our best efforts, dry flies transition to anything but dry, and have to be retired.

Not sure why, but a little while back, I had a bit of an idea about this. In the bottom of our laundry cupboard are a few different treatments we apply to gloves, jackets etc. to keep them dry. They’re pretty good stuff. What would happen, I mused, if I treated my flies with this stuff before I even hit the water?

Here, for your amusement, is what I did, and how I tested it.

I mixed up a fairly strong solution of the waterproofing liquid (about a teaspoon to a cup of water), and soaked the flies for 10 minutes.

I dried them on paper towel in the sun, but these solutions recommend using a tumble dryer to ‘heat cure’ the treatment, so I put them in a 50° oven for 10 minutes. I just felt like that was a fair equivalent.

After drying, it was time to do a test. I’d kept an untreated one out as a control, and I put the two flies in a dish of water, and waited!

Actually, I waited quite a while. They were both bobbing around like corks for at least an hour! Eventually, though, it was clear the untreated one was slowly losing the battle. It wasn’t obvious from above the water, but from the side I could see that its whole body was under, with only the tip of the wing keeping it afloat.

The treated fly, on the other hand, still had most of its hackle above the surface, with the body only just sitting through the surface.

Even more telling was a close look at the flies themselves. After a shake – like you’d do to try giving a fly a quick dry out – the floss body of the treated fly was several shades lighter than the other, and looked dry, while the untreated fly looked waterlogged.

So, there you have it. Not very scientific, but I felt it was conclusive enough that I went on to treat everything in my box that I wanted to float. I’m hoping this summer I’ll spend more time fishing dry flies than I will applying treatments and trying to get them to stay afloat!

Roll your own braided loops

Does anyone else do this? Probably not. The material is very hard to source, the commercial product is not expensive, and most good quality flylines have welded loops already. So why do I do it? I have no idea, but here’s how…

You’re going to need some braided material. I have some Gudebrod. I don’t think they make it any more. It’s too heavy for all my flylines, but it works ok for #8+

It came with a super tricky little hook tool, but I prefer a stout darning needle.

I cut about 24cm. That gives me 8cm of double, and 8cm to attach the flyline.

Fold the line to create an 8cm double.

Insert the needle near the loop and exit about half way/4cm. along the short end.

Thread the tip of the long end through your needle and draw it through with the needle. So now your short end is about 4cm and the long one about 12 cm.

Now, repeat with the short end, drawing it though the long one, and exiting after about 4cm.

If you get the lengths right, the short end will draw up inside the long one, with no cutting required. The long end is now 8cm or so, and ready for you to feed in your flyline.

I like to add a little whip finish with some rod building silk (mine’s also Gudebrod!), and varnish with some UV resin. I also soak a little bit of super glue into the area where the flyline meets the enclosed braid end.

Neat as a pin, eh?