On our recent trip to Belize a member of the group had an issue with a reel. Fortunately we tend to travel with a lot of gear and had a couple reel setups we weren’t using. Our issue could have come from not knowing what line weight was on which reel as we have several identical reels. A tip Dave learned from Lefty, many years ago, made it easy to grab the right reel and quickly get back on the water.

On the weight forward end of the fly line take a permanent marker and make a long bar to identify a 5 wt line. Add short dashes or bars for each additional line weight (6, 7, 8, 9); two long bars mean 10 wt and so on. Make the same markings on the running line portion where the line connects to the backing. These markings show you what wt line you have when you need to change lines from your 8wt tropical line to your cold water pike line for example. You’ll still need to label the spare line spool because these makrs don’t tell you what TYPE of line you’re dealing with. If you have lines and aren’t sure which weights they are we have a line scale at the shop that we can use to determine the line wt. (These scales are also available for sale.)

We use this on all our personal lines as well as all shop demo reel setups. It simplifies the identification process and limits the chances of mixing up line weights.

Recently a friend and customer visited the shop. It seems that on a recent lake excursion to an area he frequently fishes he encountered huge hatches of size 6 and 8 caddis, bloodworm fall migration, floating snails, backswimmers, etc, but saw very little to no fish activity. He fished many lakes with lots of insect activity but with the same end result and has since been considering not returning to the area.

Since I’m a fellow lake fisherman and have encountered the same situation numerous times, I suggested the following…

•  In my boat bag I carry a marble-sized bag with a couple of dozen pea-sized rocks. I will scatter six to twelve of these pea-sized rocks into an area that I know fish to frequent or lie and give it about five minutes before looking for fish activity. Trout are about as curious as house cats and will about 90% of the time swim over to investigate which will give you a clear indication of whether the lake has possibly summer or winter killed or is otherwise void of fish at this time.

It seems that North American Natives and some ingenious others would use this tactic when spearing fish.

Be sure to checkout Aaron’s feature fly gallery and future tips, tactics, and techniques. 

Wayne Posyluzny, November 2009