The idea behind this piece is to help the beginner fly fishing. The terminology and the basic practice employed in fly fishing may be unknown to the beginner at fly fishing, so we will start from the very beginning. So, if you are a beginner fly fishing person, please read on.
The instruments needed for fly fishing are generally called tackle, although if you want to be more accurate about the sort of instruments you need, you can add the words “fly fishing”. So, we use the phrase: “fly fishing tackle”. Fly fishing tackle, or gear, basically consists of artificial flies, a fly rod, a fly reel and fly line. The way it works is: the fly is attached to the line, which is wound around the reel, which is attached to the rod or pole, which is used to cast the fly or other bait.
In order to be able to cast the fly as far as possible, the line has to be a little heavier than other types of line, as a weight is used in other forms of fishing to achieve the same effect. Furthermore, the artificial flies come in all kinds of shapes, sizes and colours to reflect real, live flies, depending on the type of fish the angler wants to catch.
Generally speaking, an artificial fishing fly is created, often by hand by enthusiasts, from hair, plastic, feathers, fabric, fur and many other types of material in order to make the fly resembles, as closely as possible, the insect or fly most commonly eaten by the particular sort of fish in that particular month or at that time of the day. This means that each fishing spot requires that you select a certain type of artificial fly that will look like the insects frequenting the area where your desired type of fish swim. Therefore, a kind of fly employed in one part of the country may not work as well as you’d think in another.
There are classifications of flies too, although they fall into two basic super categories, which are referred to as ‘attractive’ and ‘imitative’. The imitative artificial flies look like real flies, while the attractive lures only rely on colour or the twinkling of sunlight in order to lure fish without necessarily resembling the fish’s usual food.
These classifications are then used to further sub-divide artificial fly fishing lures into: a] dry (resembling grasshoppers, dragonflies, etc. which float on or near the surface of the water); b] sub-surface (looking like larvae, pupae) and c] wet (resembling leeches and minnows and other small fish or fry).
The main difference between fly fishing and non-fly fishing is that fly fishing depends a great deal on the weight of the line to get the artificial lure to that part of the water where your fish are located, probably at a distance from the bank. The line is often camouflaged and hollow.
Non-fly fishing depends rather on the attached weight, usually made of lead, to draw the line off the reel and carry it forward to the correct spot, where the weight will also take the bait or lure down to the feeding fish.
If you are keen on fishing and would like to find out more, please pop along to our website called http://fishing.the-real-way.com