Will 1wt or 2wt or 3wt fly lines work as running lines with a Skagit head?

I have several tinkering things to do with rods and reels. Only one Ridgeline running line. Can I use small wt fly lines as running lines? None of them are as big as the Ridgeline running line Poppy sent me.
Jim

You could. I would gut the tapered part of the line off. The breaking strength of such light fly lines is fairly low. Rio publishes this for their lines and their 1 to 3 wt lines have a tensile strength of 12 to 15 lbs. I don't see where other manufactures publish this information but I suspect it is similar. Most purpose designed running lines break at 20lb or more.

I love the idea Jim. Who's to say you can't? Makes sense to me. Recycle, recycle, recycle.

Jerry

Thank you tailingloop and Jerry. I was only intending to use them for test casting on a two hander. But wanted to know if the characteristics of the 1-2-3wt running lines would affect the casting. I just want to experiement with skagit heads to see what grain wts work on the (two) two hander rods I have, and the 3-4 more I am going to build out of blanks sitting around doing nothing.

Just wanna get close enough to practice casting the rods with a skagit head. I don't think the running line has that much to do with performance of the rod and skagit head. At least I hope it doesn't as I have a lot of tinkering to do. Cannot afford a new running line for all the reels and rods I want to experiment with.

I have a 10' 4wt blank of which I could add a 1' extension on if I want to.
I have a 10'-6" 5wt blank of which I could build straight or add an extension to.
I have a 13' blank with no designation on it....that I could build into a two hander.
I am currently building a 10' 3wt full flex blank into a two hander with a 1' extension. Just cause the blank was around and I had no use for it.
Going to try it out on inland trout. A wee trout spey rod if you will.

So.....lots of tinkering to do.

Thanks for the help and loop....for the tip on eliminating the taper.

Thanks guys.

Jim

If it's just for test casting, you can always just pick up a spool of 20-40lb mono fishing line and is it as a running line. Won't be quite the same as a purpose built running line but it will let you figure out which heads work best.

Joe Cool

Thanks for the input. I have read that people actually use mono for running line. I just don't like the sounds of that. I would rather have a real running line. But anyway.....the reason for the question....

You are correct in perceiving that I just want running lines for testing and tinkering. But....I was not contemplating going out and buying 1wt and 2wt lines to test with. I was not proposing this as some great idea. I just happen to have about 4 of them laying around with no purpose for them. Thus the question would they work as running lines.

Thanks again for the input Joe.