Martin, I am just rigging up for saltwater flyfishing (mostly fishing for snook, redfish, spotted trout, bluefish and various snappers in Indian River in Florida) after being a trout fly fisherman in PA for many years. I've acquired a 9wt graphite Lamiglas flyrod that's 9feet 6 inches long. I've read alot of Lefty Kreh articles about saltwater fly fishing and have made it a habit to heed much of his advice. One piece of advice he gave me is not to use many flies bigger than 1/0 in size. That they are just difficult to cast. With the casting difficulty aspect in my mind, naturally the idea of using shooting heads has caught my fancy. Mr Kreh in his book writes that most of the line manufacturers provide shooting heads that are precisely 30 feet in length because that's how flyline weights are measured, by the first 30 feet. He finds fault with that because as soon as the shooting head unfurls in mid air it quickly falls to the water. He says to get better casting distance it's better to start with a shooting head of about 40 foot or longer and work your way down to the optimal SH length thru trial and error much the same way you advocate to determine what's the best SH length you can handle. In my case I am finding 40 foot shooting heads hard to find in 10wt. I know where I can get one in 11wt. Would I be making a huge mistake attempting a shooting head that's 2 steps above my 9wt rod? Not that it matters much but I will be using a 10wt Tioga reel.
- Log in to post comments
