I fish the Youghiogeny River in SW Pa for smallmouth. There are plenty of 6-10 foot deep runs that I just can’t touch with a 1/36oz Clouser and a floating line. So the need for sinking line becomes obvious. But…which sink rate am I after?
A guide on the river highly recommended this one:
Scientific Anglers Mastery Uniform Sink Plus II
So I see it’s a type II, rated at 2-3" per second. I was thinking I very likely needed a faster sinking line, though his advice is probably pretty good. My reason to question it…I’d be waiting 4-6 seconds per foot of drop, water’s 6’ deep, I’m half a minute into waiting for the fly to hit the 6’ mark. Seems too long?
To those of you fishing sinking lines in smallie rivers, which ones and why?
I am a big fan of the Quad Tip fly lines from SA. I have 2. One on my 6 wt and i on the 7 wt.
You get a floating tip, 2 different sink tips (1 fast, one slower) and an intermediate tip. I use the Intermediate tip alot for Smallmouth. They dont cast bad at all. A lot better than the loop-on 5 ft sink tips. The loop to loop connections work fine. They go through the guides reasonablly well though it helps to pay attention where the connection is while fishing. I just lower the rod tip a little and the connection goes in or out of the guides very easily. If conditions change or you need a different tip, it’s changed out pretty quickly. Just un-loop the old one and loop on the new one. Tie a fly back on and you are good to go. I keep leaders on each of tips so the leader gets changed out with the tip each time. Short learders on the sinking tips and longer leaders on the floating and intermediate tips.
I fish mostly rivers so I prefer a faster sinking line. If I had to wait a half minute to get to the bottom I would miss half the hole I am fishing. I use a Cortland 444 full sink type VI, works good for me.
I am however looking at buying a slower sink tip or full sink for fishing still waters. When I bass fish the smaller lakes I feel I am missing fish because my fly sinks past them to fast.
So there you have it, a reason to buy both.
That’s the problem I anticipate. I’m sure a type II helps, just doesn’t seem like it’s enough. At the $54-$60 a piece that these lines seem to cost(at least the Rio’s and SAs), well, I don’t want to buy a type II, III, and IV to see which actually works for my purposes. Of course no one can actually tell me what I need with certainty, but I figure the experience base here might garner a few suggestions…
In my neck of the woods we have some “black water” rivers with some respectable deep holes and I like to fish from my canoe. Here’s where I get a lot of use out of sinking lines and it seems to me the use is harder on them then on the floating lines.
May I suggest, start basic (and cheaper), by that I mean I use the standard ole “high performance, general purpose” S.A. line, available at a lot of WallyMart stores for about $12.00 - for what I do they work just fine and about one good season of use, they’ll be used the following season for another purpose … like maybe holding up the tomatoe vines in the garden!
on susky i use a SA ex fast float- sink. also have super fast in SA but only use it in very fast water. fished the river last nite, from 4 to 9 pm had about 15 bass all on sub surface flys. white fly was on but fish didn t work, fish were small 8 ins to 12 ins flyman 3
