RIO's Skagit Shooting Heads - NEW SIZES RIO announces the launch of new key sizes to their popular Skagit shooting head range. These new sizes; 350, 400, 500, 600 and 700 grains, ensure that anglers have all sizes of Skagit line available. More and more anglers are finding the benefit of rigging up one reel with a shooting line and interchanging between the Scandinavian style AFS heads and Skagit heads according to fly size and conditions. RIO recommends attaching the heads to their floating Powerflex core shooting lines for the very best in performance. For the lighter sizes, between 350 and 450 grains the 0.024" diameter is ideal, for the medium sized heads between 500 and 650 grains, the 0.030" diameter is the best and for the heavier heads of 700 and 750 grains attach the 0.035" shooting line. An alternative shooting line is RIO's SlickShooter. Use the 35lb on heads between 350 and 550 grains and the 50lb on heads heavier than 600 grains. Both ends of the Skagit heads feature a small, neat welded loop. Attach a suitable shooting line to the rear loop and the required sinking (or floating) tip to the front end. The rear loop is bar-coded for easy recognition. RIO’s Skagit heads are available from all authorized RIO dealers and have a recommended retail price of $44.95.
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RIO's Technology is new, that's what... What do nonlinear dynamic deformations, numerical algorithms, non-uniform elastica, and the legendary Serret-Frenet reference frame have to do with fooling fish? Lots, we’ve discovered. All the concepts, all the revolutionary tapers, all the passion in the world won’t magically turn out the world's best fly lines – you need the technology to make it happen. (Of course, real life fishing experience is required – you ever try to cast with a slide rule?) Luckily for anyone who knows everything about a caddis fly and nothing about a copolymer, RIO has done the research.
Look no further than our more recent industry-changing technologies—AgentX™ and Super Floatation Technologies™. We've all wanted a higher floating line for a long time but, even as remarkable as our fly lines are, they can’t float without a little technological intervention. Traditionally, getting a line to float has required mixing a bunch of tiny glass balls (cleverly called microspheres) into the soupy coating compound prior to the curing phase. The higher you want your line to float, the more glass balls you must add. But this creates a problem in that the microspheres can create a rougher, microscopically abrasive coating that has less plastisol which results in a structurally weaker fly line that cracks.
So, after years of experimenting with exotic compounds and plenty of waist-deep R&D, our super-smart lab people in the dust-free rooms discovered an element six times more buoyant than those made by our competitors. Six times. But the right element was just the start. It took an “exponential leap” (that’s how the labcoats talk) in rethinking the manufacturing process to put it all together. That is how RIO developed "Fusion Technology" (used in all AgentX and SFT lines). By simultaneously processing this super-buoyant undercoating with a super-smooth outer coating (remember far fewer micropheres) the results are the smoothest, most durable, and highest floating fly lines imaginable.
And we didn’t stop there. If one coating of AgentX is so buoyant, then two coats must be, well, really buoyant. Introducing Super Floatation Technology, a manufacturing technique that allows us to fuse two coatings of AgentX seamlessly. No regular microspheres are used at all in SFT. This specialized process is applied to the front four feet of the fly line, producing a tip with a specific gravity of around 0.65. Compare that to the standard s.g. of 0.88 or so and you get an idea of just how significant this is. You can go look up specific gravity now, but, trust us – 0.65 is incredibly good. Better yet, go try it for yourself and see how productive fishing with a tip that stays afloat can be.
That's revolutionary.
That’s what technology and passion can do.
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