Wrong Line No Fish

Visualise this setting. Fairly shallow water of about four to five feet. There’s structure and flowing water at one part. Plenty of fish holding near the structure waiting to ambush prey that is carried by the current and also using the structure as shelter.

You’d imagine there will not be much difference if we use sinking line or floating line. After all it is just a couple of feet deep.

Just make some adjustments by putting the fly at a slightly different location and waiting a little longer for the fly to get down to depth.

Wrong. The difference was stark.

We pulled three barramundi out from that spot. The setup is Rio’s outbound short sink tip line.

Then switched to another rod with floating line. Exactly the same fly, a streamer. This time, Rio’s Permit WF Floating line. Made multiple casts and nothing.

Switched back to the earlier setup with sinking line and just three casts later, the first fish hit!

What the above demonstrates is the very small small strike zone in this case. If the fly is even slightly out, the target fish will not move to strike our offerings. Especially so if in heavily pressured waters.