Fly Fishing Line Weights

Video Transcript

"The line weight basically tells you how large of a fly you can cast with that particular line and rod combination. The heavier the line weight, say an eight weight versus a three weight will just mean you can throw a larger fly and most likely for a larger fish. But it doesn't have anything to do with pound test. Most of your fly lines are going to be between twenty and thirty pound test and that's just because of the core. The coating doesn't really do anything for the strength of the line. That just adds your weight that you're going to be casting. Now most of the lines you're going to be using are going to be what we call weight forward lines, which means the weight is toward the front end of the line and the back end of the line is pretty much unweighted. So, the lines will come in lots of different tapers, from level to weight forward to double taper, but what you're looking for most of the time, for most applications is what we call a weight forward line, and you just want to make sure that that line is the same weight as the rod you are casting. So, we have a five weight rod here and we have a five weight line."