In the following few days I made the time to update the boat for fall fishing. Out with the extra sun shirts, the many bottles of sunscreen, a few reels of RIO Grand’s for guests who need hopper lines for those August afternoons. Had to make room for those essentials of fall fly fishing. Being prepared is not only for the Boy Scouts. It is imperative for anglers as well.
RIO Fly Line Cleaning Towelette. My favorite RIO product this year. The fly line is the vehicle that delivers the fly to the target. Important that the fly line be clean. Better shooting, better accuracy, better floating…better everything. Fly line health is integral to angling success any day on the water. The Line Cleaning Towelette is easy to put in your pocket and use a few times during the day. I am an anal line cleaner, but my line always shoots well. Just takes a minute to freshen up that fly line. Use it, believe it, love it. At 99 cents it is the easiest and cheapest way to improve your day!
RIO Freshwater Outbound Short. The best streamer line ever created. Honest. Made me fall back in love with bugger chucking. I had taken 10+ years off of streamer fishing because it always seemed like a lot of work to me. Casting those fly lines that were not created for casting, but created for those who liked punishment. All day punishment. The streamer lines of yesteryear were not that much fun to cast. We have arrived at fun time. Fly line technology since the millennium change has been incredible. Never have fly lines been as diverse and effective for specific uses as they are today. Many inside the industry, the guide business, would agree. RIO is the fly line leader in both technology and ease of use.
The RIO Freshwater Outbound Short has eliminated false casting while streamer fishing. Just pick it up at the color change, shoot on your backcast, and launch. They could have called it the Smiling Streamer Line. ‘Cause that is what you do when casting and fishing this game changer of a fly line. Thanks RIO for bringing me back into the streamer game!
RIO Flouroflex Plus. High knot strength, supple, and amazingly strong. I use it for everything. I sometimes get criticized for not using nylon products…but why sacrifice performance is my question. Just use the best stuff all the time. Fish are hard enough to catch, why not have as many advantages as you possibly can. Yep, stacking the deck is an approved fly fishing style. I use it for streamer, dry fly, and nymphing. Great for all uses.
RIO Trout LT WF. I love to dry fly fish more than any other discipline. I will always choose the dry over the nymph or the streamer. I think that many would agree with me. Dry fly fishing is why many anglers become fly fishing anglers. Witnessing the fish rise to a fly is really, as good as it gets. So, you must have the appropriate fly line for the job. The RIO LT WF is my new choice.
Not really all that new though. The Rio Perception is creeping up the ladder in my mind. Not there yet, but getting ever closer as I learn the casting and handling intricacies of the Perception.
I was a Double Taper fanatic for the 1st 15 years of angling life. Now I am a Weight Forward fan. It’s OK to change your beliefs. They are yours, you own them. I love the LT WF. Casts like a DT with the best attributes of the WF. A long progressive taper for pure energy transfer to the fly and the riseform. Larger diameter line turning over smaller diameter line. It works. This fly line is perfect for our freely rising, yet finicky, trout on the Missouri River. The color change at 36’ for a 5wt. allows us to measure the distance and use that information to our advantage. We generally require longer than normal, or comfortable, casts down and across to our fish.
This line loves to cast a little farther when you need that extra 15 feet. Along with the power, comes the Light Touch. The Light Touch at 50+ feet prepares the fly for gentle landings near the ring of the rise. The running line is slick and feeds well when sending line downtstream. The all too common long reach cast with a line that responds to the call. The clearly less tangles with any Rio line allows anglers more opportunities and less down time. It’s A very good short caster too. When wading for BWO rising trout you can occasionally get very close to the targets. 20 feet is sometimes all you need during the heaviest of hatches and voracious feeding behaviors.