In general i would disagree with adam about the fly loading the rod. I would want a line heavy enough to control the fly.
There are many challenges with furled leaders, but they are just as effective in catching fish. In general, i feel level line is over indexed.
The sink tip on the oudachi works. It is not a gimmick in my opinion. I used them a bit in the salt. The downside is the diameter. In faster water, one would be better off with LL…less drag.
In general, I dont like casting or fishing really heavy flies as I feel they dont present as well or are as naturalistic as weightless or lightly weighed flies.
I tend to get creative with current to present deep. I feel it is a better skill to develop and allows for changing presentations without fly or line changing.
Totally agree with you here. It’s much more pleasing to cast heavy flies with a heavier line. I hate that whiplash feeling when a heavy fly loads the rod on lighter line.
I had a feeling we were talking about different techniques for the same scenario…
I personally don’t consider sink tips to be an effective way to get down to 6-8’ of depth in a river fishing scenario using a fixed line rod. The reason I say this is because even the longest fixed lines don’t get us far enough upstream to have enough time in the drift for the lightly weighted sink tip to get down 6’. If they did, it eliminates the huge advantage of not having any casting line on the water. In the opposite scenario where we are swinging downstream, I found having the Oudachi in the water robbed me of depth because of the extra drag versus thinner level lines.
If you want to get weightless flies to depth, I would adapt some of Pat Dorsey"s techniques with splitshot in that scenario…
I quite often fish corner pools that are in that 6-8’ deep range and I have no problem getting my two flies to the bottom early in the drift. In that scenario I greatly prefer my Suntech Kaname III FP43 over both my Traveller 44 or Oni Honryu 450. I will run as much as 12’ of level line in light wind and as little as 6’ if its blowing 20mph; I prefer three colors of yarn marker on the Tenjo line or even Markers on 3’ of 5x or 6x sighter. On the 6-10’ of casting line I will add 3-6’ of 7x TroutHunter Flourocarbon, a quad-surgeons knot with a 6" tag and another 2-3’ of 7x. In a 6-8’ deep corner pool I will normally be running a 4mm inverting tungsten beaded fly on point(Tasmanian devil or Jig Nymph), a 3.5-4mm fly on the tag above that, and sometimes I will have a third fly above those two, usually with at least a 2.5mm bead. I will up the bead sizes if the fly has a lot of drag.
In the above scenario I have found added success by fishing the pool as best I can Euro style, then adding a small indicator to fish further away. Addiing the indicator normally adds a few fish to my total that I couldn’t get with the flies swinging across current at the longer ranges Euro style.
As for casting, I haven’t found or seen a way to cast the above rig without some variation of a Belgian or Oval Cast. I believe everyone should fish however they feel like, but if you want to avoid constant tangled rigs I would avoid traditional Tenkara casting with the rig I detailed above. The advantage to learning a Constant Tension cast is that you can use really light, thin lines that can be held off the water at greater distances without the dreaded sag while not tangling your rig every cast. The Constant Tension casts also eliminate the whiplash feeling which is crappy…
With all that said, I agree that traditional Tenkara casting feels better and is preferred when fishing water that allows it.
I know this is blasphemy, but to the above point, after two seasons of dedicated tight line nymphing with Tenkara, I am starting to realize that a traditional 11’ Euro rod is probably a much more versatile tool for the bigger river, deeper water scenarios because of the ability to quickly achieve more favorable rod angles without changing lines, as well as added casting distance when stripping jig streamers, not to mention added distance when prospecting with a dry/dropper setup. But, fighting fish on the fixed line is more fun for me, so I keep doing it
Hey if you love it do it. The competition anglers in fly fishing are driving toward using thinner and thinner level lines. The rods are also moving toward softer and softer sections. This all sounds line a keiryu set up to me.
@mak1277 if you want to fish 10 feet deep on a river with a tenkara rod then you need enough line to do that. I am not suggesting to change your tippet length but to drop line below the surface. So if you use 3-4 feet of tippet that means to fish 10 feet deep you will need a long line. Perhaps in the places you are considering this it means you have to change lines so if that is the case give the oudachi a try.
I am not into a weight forward furled line for my fishing. I prefer a system that the only adjustment I tend to have to make is the fly. Just me. Have fun!
If that is addressed to me, I no longer fish furled leaders. I have not for several years…maybe 6. Nor have I fished LL in quite a while.
Noting that is not a dig at LL or furled leaders. By the footage I have seen, Sabata-san fished a furled leader. I doubt anyone is going to argue that it makes him less of an angler because he didnt follow a trend or public opinion…how to be an effective tenkara angler.
Really most success is the archer not the arrow.
I also feel how an angler fishes is sort of such a huge consideration in their choices in equipment it really makes it impossible to generalize. Sometimes getting equipment dialed in can take a decade or more. I am still tuning my own setups. I have arrived at some preferences that are definitely not documented or mainstream. THE Devil is in the details.
Competition angling is not a thing that I aspire to. To me there is an aspect of it that is soulless. I feel the same about following trends.
Learning about materials and techniques and developing our own approach is far more important. Understanding the why and under what conditions a technique or a piece of hardware is useful is so much more powerful and less superficial.
It seems like today folk are suddenly experts in methods that they have not done a deep dive on or have little personal experience with. Just base everything on what they are told or read. Also there is a tendency to try something a couple times and write it off. Any hardware or technique takes time to fully understand. If you dont stick with something for a full season, you cannot begin to understand that method or hardware and what it offers.
I do not believe most of what I read. I can say this without a doubt, I find I learn far more from personal experience and experimentation. What I do is very tuned to how I fish and probably will not apply to how others fish.
Fishing is such a personal path, after the first couple years we should be blazing our own trails not following the paths of others. I realize that is not for everyone, but doing that can really make a change in all your angling. I fish a number of disciplines and many unorthodox/undocumented approaches. I can say without a doubt it has made me more successful.
What is nuts, is that my 13 year old daughter has already started to branch from what I have taught her and she has come to her own conclusions and success. We should always support that in each other and reduce the temptation to put everything into a formula. I can see by her success that there is power in encouraging experimentation.
Hi Gressak my thoughts are addressed to your comment that when fishing a bead head fly you disagree that the fly weight loads the rod and that you prefer a heavier line for casting those weighted flies.
The original author of this topic wants advice on fishing the occasional deeper hole at 6-10 feet deep and was looking into the oudachi line to tight line nymph in that situation and wanted peoples thoughts on that idea.
On principle I do not like such a line for nymphing weighted flies.
Why?
Heavier lines cause drape and want to pull the whole system to hang under your rod tip.
When the system drags back to you like that strike detection is impacted as is drift.
Comp style nymphing anglers combat that by casting very thin mono not very different from LL or #3 nylon in tenkaraverse. Comp anglers did not invent this idea….regular old creative anglers like all of us did…but they would not have adopted it if it did not work very well. I mentioned it to support my point not because I am trying to be “on trend”. Sure a heavy line will also load the rod…I am not saying it wont…I am merely saying with a weighted fly you don’t need line weight to cast as you do with an unweighted fly.
I am not digging on furled lines either. Sebata-san fished unweighted flies and tended to leave a short section of his line on the water. He also used very long super stiff rods - Gamakatsu I believe was his favorite. He also fished wide open mountain streams where wind was a bitch. So his rig makes sense…
So my advice to the original poster is if you want to go deeper on occassion dont change out your line just change your fly to a heavier more streamlined option and go deeper with that added weight and maybe trying a tuck cast. When you move to the next spot swap the fly back.
Anyhow just trying to help the original poster with another option before buying a new line. If he wants to try it then by all means and report back the findings.
@arieger i understood the context. Also, I think mechanically we always want a line paired with the fly. Better turnover/energy transfer always provides better control and accuracy.
Without significant lead, i doubt one can tight line nymph a 6-10 foot pool.
It has been a long time since I fished a heavy bead, so i could be missing something. Bur with traditional fly fishing I have to tune up my line system a bit when casting heavy vs light.
Fishing deep drape is not an issue. I feel drape is primarily an issue when dead drifting a surface or close to surface presentation. The classic attempt at drag free drift. Fishing deeper one can always lay a touch of line on the surface. Fishing even deeper I will sink even more line. Really in a 6 foot pool we have no choice.
Really I feel drape is over indexed. Most of the time I am putting drag on my presentation. Often success is a factor of presentation type and presentation angle, not just a drag free presentation. Consider how a traditional fly angler can be successful with their heavy lines and the drag they create. Splitting hairs on the difference in LL vs furled in terms of drag is comparably insignificant and can be easily overcome by presentation approach.
As I noted a couple responses up. In deep pools i actually like a highly visible line. Furled leaders can check that box. The only downside with furled is the diameter in current. The reason I like visible lines is even the pools that seem to be still have quite a bit of water movement, and the running line can reveal the currents and also give cues on where fish may hold. It can help read the water. I find most leveline to have poor visibility once subsurface.
Going with a heavy bead is not always the answer either. I really like the futsu styled flies for deep presentations.
@mak1277 if you have not seen one of my recent posts on the topic, give it a read. Definitely something to try. With the oudachi I send you, i will send you some other stuff to play around with.
I hate to disagree, but I find drape and especially line on the water at an angle to rob me of significant depth during a drift. Once I started Tuck casting and keeping the line vertical while the flies get to depth, I was able to step down a bead size and still get my flies down earlier in the drift.
One way to test this out for yourself is to fish a known depth run/position and see how quickly you can get your flies touching bottom in the drift. The earlier you can get your flies down, the more water that can be effectively with each cast. Try a tuck cast with line held vertically after the cast above the flies and slightly tight as you lower your rod tip to control the descent. Seems like the more the line is horizontal during the descent, the slower the flies go down. Thats why their is a point of diminishing returns to lengthening the casting line past the point where it can be held off the water if you are trying to get flies deep.
Any line, even 7x tippet on the water slows the decent of my flies. I picture line in the water at anything other than a vertical angle above the flies to be acting as a parachute. This sag also effects strike detection. I know in the Tenkara world we watch the sagged line, but the Euro world seems to have a more productive way for me on the heavily pressured Blue Ribbon rivers I fish.
When I get a perfect cast, the flies hit and the line follows them down with the slightest tension from as vertical an angle as I can hold.
Like I mentioned earlier, everyone should fish however they enjoy. With that said, I would love to hear other effective methods to get flies down 6’ in a Tenkara size drift since I fish that kind of water a lot in the winter when I fish most.
For me, Lance Egan’s video series has been the most helpful in learning how to consistently catch fish on our highly pressured rivers that have 6’ deep holes.
I largely agree with most of what you have written in the entries. In short, line diameter introduces drag. Drape introduces drag. No argument there.
How I overcome drag is to introduce more drag on my fly. Futsu style flies or palmered stiff hackle will do this. The fly has drag that overcomes tippet and even casting line drag. With my spiderwire lines, they are light enough that they dont introduce too much drape. But even with furled lines, I doubt the weight difference is that much of a big deal.
For straight line presentations, I suspect you will dig this general fly pattern. It has more tactile contact than a bead, even unweighed. If the current is strong, the rod can be bent slightly because of the resistance.
There are more detailed notes here.
In terms of deep pool and heavy flies. I tend to max out to lightly weighed flies. If I use beads they are small and the fly is sometimes balanced with some copper wire. Futsu is really the ticket to deep presentations for me. If you have not tried it, you will laugh at how much resistence it can create…and it tends not to find snags like metal will. It delivers naturally because the current suspends it, it also drags it down deep. With really deep pools Sometimes my running line will helix in the different currents. It requires patience for the fly to make its way, riding the currents often to where the fish are holding. If you can see your running line at depth, you can often see the subtle takes.
@Harry@Gressak I agree 100% with Harry and that is what I have been trying to convey…perhaps not as eloquently…but that is my point.
On the futsu side of things…I love a beadhead futsu…the bead helps keep the system tighter for the ride down so you are faster to strike detection…as sometimes the takes come fast. Also once down in the strike zone drifting you can gently pulse the fly and the stiff hackles create resistance so that the fly does not easily leave the zone…there is sort of a vibratto balance between weight and hackle…fun stuff to try.
While my personal preference is to fish unweighted flies in the surface film, I do also want to at least catch one fish when out…so if they are not wanting to come up then I go down and I have no problem tossing on a beaded fly if I cannot get the other flies to them.
@mak1277 Back to your original question of thoughts on specialty nymphing lines…I think you will find what Harry found in using that line for nymphing. As for length…try out what @Gressak sends you and then let us know your findings. I would say that you should pair it with a rod at most its length or shorter than the line…and based on Harry’s findings it seems a tip flex rod will cast it best…?
I plan to fish this with my HELLbender. Interestingly enough, Brent from dragon tail recommended I go longer than the rod length, owing to the amount of line that would be underwater
Edit - I misread your comment the first time. I now realize you’re saying the same thing.
