Nick Thomas looks thoroughly at his grayling tackle
My standard method for winter grayling fishing for the past few seasons has been to use a braid line (Tackling up for Ladies in Winter. ESF #47). This is an ultra-sensitive method for fishing close in under the rod tip; the light non-stretch braid transmits every bump of the point fly along the river bottom and the slightest pause or lift as a fish takes. The one key drawback of having a rod strung with a braid rig is lack of flexibility in fishing distance. It’s great for fishing with 10-15 feet of braid and tippet out of the rod tip, but it’s never going to allow you to cover than deep channel 30 feet away that you can’t wade any closer to. As the braid is very limp and has virtually no weight, attempting to sling your nymphs any great distance can result in total collapse of the line and some interesting tangles to sort out.
I was aware from various fly fishing forums and posts on some of the fishing websites that there were a variety of coated fly lines becoming available that were specifically designed to replace a conventional fly line for short line nymphing. A couple of hours trawling the web generated a list of seven lines that were available in the UK. There were others I came across that either lacked key information or were only available in limited markets.
Like a lot of things in life you generally get what you pay for; these specialised lines range from £20-£60 with a range of profiles, weights and other features. Four of the lines have level profiles with diameters 0.55mm or greater and lengths over 22m to make them competition legal under FIPS rules, although I doubt that matters to most potential buyers. The other three are tapered, though less so than conventional double taper and weight forward lines. The majority of the lines have brightly coloured sections at one end to improve visibility and act as an indicator and most have loops for easy attachment of leader and backing
After reading a lot of reviews and opinions I took the plunge and bought the Airflo Euro Nymph line. The low price and the welded loops at both end persuaded me that this line would be best for an experimental foray and that I wouldn’t be mucking about trying to find a decent method for connecting the line to the leader and backing; such thin lines don’t work well with braided loops. Besides, the line is made in Wales just up the A470 from me and I like to support the local guys. I’ve been using the Airflo line in place of braid for all of my grayling fishing this winter and I’m pretty happy with it.
My first impression of the line when loading it onto a reel was how thin it is; it looks and feels very similar to the running line at the back end of a shooting head style fly line. When I replaced a standard weight forward 3wt line I added quite a bit of backing to fill out the reel spool before loading the nymph line.
The line is a pale olive colour with a couple of feet or so of orange at one end and is finished with small neat welded loops at both ends. Since the line is level you can use it either way round depending on your colour preference for the working end or swap it round when one end becomes worn. The line comes spooled assuming you are going to attach your leader to the orange end, so you’ll need to wind it onto a spare spool if you want to load your reel with the line reversed.
With such a thin line the welded loops are much smaller than on a standard fly line so it took a bit of experimentation to come up with a leader attachment method that I was happy with. In the end I settled on looping on a 4ft 0-4wt furled leader terminating in a tippet ring to which I attach 6-8 feet of fluorocarbon tippet.
Wading in water up to waist deep I can fish my 10ft 3wt with a short line using only the leader plus a foot or so of the nymph line out of the rod tip; pretty much how I would fish a braid line rig in fact. The tactile feel of the point fly trundling along the bottom and the sensitivity to takes are not quite as sharp and distinct as with a braid line, however the ease of handling makes up for that. On a good day a braid line is a joy to fish with, but on a windy day, if you hit a lot of snags, or you let your attention wander, you can spend a fair bit of time turning your rod round and round trying to disentangle the braid from around the tip section. In contrast the coated nymph line behaves like a conventional fly line and a loop around the tip section is easily reversed with a circular flick of the rod tip.
Once I’ve fished through the water close to me I pull line off the reel and fish further and further out holding the rod up to keep the line off the water with just the tip of the orange indicator section on the surface. The diameter and mass of the tip is so low that the flies run down the current totally drag free and with minimal sag in the line I can remain in touch all the way through the drift.
Bear in mind that this is a level fly line, so casting, or rather slinging, any distance requires a different approach to using a conventional tapered fly line where the line weight loads the rod. Using a short line you can fish in the same way as with braid allowing your nymphs to fish through in front of you and then bringing the rod tip back and over to lob the flies upstream again. You can extend the line to cover more water while maintaining the same style but there comes a point, depending on the weight of your nymphs, at which lobbing the flies from downstream to upstream becomes less effective. To fish a longer line it’s necessary to flick the line off the water into a back cast, wait for the tug of the weighted flies to straighten the line and then lay out the line on the water upstream. Don’t try any false casting; it’s not a good idea when fishing heavily weighted nymphs and doesn’t work too well with a level line. After a good many days on the river with this line I’ve settled into three ways of fishing which cover the water close in and further out:
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Short line; leader and 1-2 feet of fly line out of rod tip, nymphs flicked upstream at 20-30 degrees to the current.
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Medium line; 10-20 feet of fly line out of rod tip, line and leader allowed to straighten out downstream followed by bringing rod up, over and down in a long arc to unfurl line and leader at around 45 degrees to the current.
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Long line; 20 feet or more of fly line out of rod tip, line lifted off the water with a slow draw followed by a fast back flick, rotation of the rod and delivery onto the water at 45-60 degrees upstream.
In contrast to 2015, when the rivers in Wales were in high flood and unfishable for most of November and December, this year the lack of rain through the autumn and early winter resulted in the Taff flowing at summer levels through virtually all of the back end of 2016. With low water levels and mild temperatures the grayling just weren’t shoaling up in their normal locations and the usually good pockets were not yielding decent numbers of fish. If I had been fishing a braid line close in under the rod tip I would have picked up an odd fish here and there, but the pickings would have been slim compared to a normal winter. Having the flexibility to fish short or long with the nymph line allowed me to find and fish some new hot spots and pick up a good number of net filling grayling of over 2lbs.
Nick Thomas lives in South Wales. He started fly fishing on Scottish hill lochs many years ago and continues to design, tie and fish flies for trout, carp, bass and anything else that’s going.