Take Care of Your Gear and It Will Take Care of You

Noticed the price of fly lines lately? Yeah, they're pushing a hundred bucks these days for many of the most popular lines. In my experience, the performance improvements are very much worth it - especially if you're a less-than-perfect caster like myself.

600' of fly line on the floor.

In my Trout/Smallmouth quiver I had a wide range of lines -- floating textured, intermediate, sink tip, etc. I've dealt with polymer-based products of all ilk for enough years to know that if you care for them they last longer and perform better during that life. With that in mind, this year I started to do a little research on fly line care. What I found centered on two key areas:

Clean
Even the cleanest of rivers has a monumental amount of gunk. Leaves. Algae. Dead salmon guts. Bugs. Tree bark. Foam. And your line floats through all the same gunk on every drift. Today's modern fly line has a wide range of coatings, textures, and other advanced technologies to enable it to cast, mend, and perform well. Initial research showed a number of folks who recommended simply washing them in dish detergent. Then others said, "no, that strips the chemicals, use liquid hand soap...". Wait, I've got an idea, manufacturers develop cleaning solutions for their lines. Since they designed the damn thing, maybe they know a thing or two about cleaning them. A visit to my friends at Schultz Outfitters - guys who know lines - recommended two products:

• For non-textured lines like Rio Outbound Short, the Rio Fly Cleaning Towelette
• For textured lines like the Scientific Anglers Titan Taper, the Rio Wonder Cloth

Condition

A well-conditioned line floats higher (if it's a floater - duh), casts further, and lasts longer. Just like all of my polymer kayaks and canoes have been regularly treated with 303 Protectant, my fly lines need protection, too. For the past couple of years I've been using Rio's Agent X Line Dressing. 

The process was pretty simple - strip the line off the reel. And yes, it takes a while to strip 100' of fly line of. Even longer to do it six times like I did. Try to keep it neat so things don't tangle. Chaos is a pain here, so take a little care. Then clean, and let them dry overnight. Next apply the dressing with a cloth. Leave it to dry overnight, buff with a clean cloth and bingo bango, you're in business. Reel 'em up, put the reels in cases, and you're ready to store.

And yes, I know storing the line on the reel isn't as good as wrapped around a larger coffee can, or spun back on to the original spool is better. However, if you're reading this blog, you're at least a bit serious about this. Which means you've got more than one reel/line to deal with. Do you really want to wrap 600' of line around a coffee can? And then have to re-spool it all in the Spring? No, you don't.

There you have it -- line maintenance 101!

-Sean-