In this episode, we talk about weight and fly fishing. Because if you’re not fishing a dry fly on the surface, then weight, in some form or another, is part of the presentation. There are all kinds of weight options, of course, from wire ribs on a wet fly and heavy wire hooks, to lead wraps and tungsten beads on a nymph or coneheads on a streamer. Sinking lines, sink tips and even poly leaders will get you down. And of course there’s split shot, in a few different forms, along with drop shot.

Something has to get you through the surface and down deeper. As soon as your target zone is under the water, how you’ll get the fly into various parts of the water column becomes the question. And getting near the river bed is often critical to success. All of these weight types are useful.

Weight is weight. And I’ve often put it this way: Weight is the original sin of fly fishing. If you aren’t fishing dry flies, then you’ve already left the purist plantation behind. So accept it. Surrender to it, and enjoy the rewards of fishing flies where trout usually eat them anyway.

Embracing tungsten beads but thumbing your nose at split shot makes me chuckle. Insisting that a sinking line is superior to a conehead streamer for getting down defies logic. Oh for sure, the presentation may be very different, and that’s why we use all options. Choosing one form of weight over another form doesn’t make you a better angler. It doesn’t make it more FLY fishing. It just makes you an efficient angler.

So in this discussion with my Troutbitten friends, we walk through the various ways to get a fly under the surface. We’ talk about the advantages and disadvantages of each style of weight and talk about our preferences.

We Cover the Following

• Is weight the original sin?
• What makes it FLY fishing anyway?
• Types of weight in the flies
• Types of weight on the line
• Types of weight in the line

Resources

READ: Troutbitten | Split Shot vs Weighted Flies
READ: Troutbitten | Don't Hate Split Shot - Have a System (VIDEO)
READ: Troutbitten | Stop the Split Shot Slide
READ: Troutbitten | Beads Are the Best

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