Special Delivery | Clean those lines | Isoro Marsh
Isoro Marsh | Clean those lines
A clean, slick, smooth shooting fly line can literally be the difference between a fantastic day on the water and a potentially frustrating day on the water. Dirty fly lines can hamper line speed which ultimately has a negative impact on accuracy, shooting ability, possibly floatation and mending capabilities. When fishing streamers or flies that you are casting and stripping to retrieve them, a dirty fly line can wreak havoc on your line handling fingers in the form of line burn and abrasion.
I just recently returned from Argentina’s Panara River and Isoro Marsh chasing Dorado and continue to be reminded of the importance of keeping a fly line clean to bring out optimal performance. The game of fly fishing for Dorado in these areas consists of casting to areas of known underwater structure, current transitions, steep banks and islands with water overflow breaching the main channels and submerging the low areas on the islands. It is a daily repetitive game of casting 8 weight & 9 weight rods and retrieving large streamers (7” – 12”) or large mice patterns and Crease flies when the fish are hunting the surface for their next meal. It is the kind of predator fishing I love to do… the more casts made, the more water covered, the higher the percentage of locating, hooking and landing fish. It can be a physical and mental grind to do this six or seven days in row for eight to nine hours each day. My approach or mantra is, longer casts keep the fly in the water “fishing” over a greater distance and therefore improve the angler’s odds of encountering fish. Keep casting and stripping that fly back, and good things usually happen.
Beyond the sheer number of casts made every day there are other environmental considerations that can impact a fly lines cleanliness and performance. The waters in these areas have a good amount of particulate matter in them, the marshes have aquatic vegetation, algae, muddy banks, abrasive & sharp bushes and plants, and certainly copious amounts of Capybara and bird poop! Needless to say, fly lines get dirty after several hundred casts a day into these waters. This is where the Scientific Anglers Cleaning Pad 2-Pack comes to the rescue. All Scientific Anglers fly lines are manufactured with our integrated slickness technology that is throughout the entire coating of the line. When a fly line becomes dirty that slickness can’t work like it should. To fix this, simply fold the cleaning pad over the fly line (fabric side contacting the line) and pull the line through the pad while maintaining some pressure between the pad and the fly line. This removes the dirt and exposes more of the underlying slickness additives we use in the line coatings. We generally recommend pulling the fly line through the cleaning pad until you start to see a hint of the line color show up on the cleaning pad surface. This indicates the removal of a microscopic layer of the line coating and further exposed more of the integrated slickness additives. Note: It is not necessary to use any topical line conditioners or silicones on a Scientific Anglers line after using the cleaning pad, our integrated slickness technology does not require it.
I had a conversation with a couple of the anglers in our group that were not aware of Scientific Anglers slickness technology or the best way to clean their lines to help maintain optimal performance. I gave each of them a reusable cleaning pad, walked them through the simple process that takes less than 5 minutes to do either at the end of the day or throughout the day if you are doing a lot of casting. A happy fly line makes a happy angler!
