Type(s) fly line

[gandalph]

What type of fly line do you use on the Salmon River? Does anyone use a Mid level sink tip? or do you mostly use floating line? I guess the water conditions would be taken into consideration.

[flyguy]

All I use are floating lines. I may put a custom mini head in my leader on occassion--but it's rare and no fun to cast, and I'm usually not fishing streamers in places where a sinking line is required. I see no value in fishign nymphs or eggs with a weighted line...it's like shooting a gun holding only the trigger. Also--I'm not against hacking-up a cheap line. Just because they put that pretty front taper on the head does not mean you NEED it!

Much of it has to do with your decision on how you want to fish. One pretty good angler once told me "There are no rules.".

How true.

[JStreamside]

FG nailed it...by fishing lines with heavy front ends you do take a lot of fun out of fishing fishing nymphs and such. Just keep things as simple as possible to get the fly in front of the fish.

Regardless if I'm fishing the SR, Erie, Finger Lakes tribs, Delaware River etc I carry one reel with 2-extra spools. One standard WF 5 wt floating line, one running line set-up and one with a Jim Teeny mini-tip. That's it...no need for anything else with how and where we fish. I make my choice of lines based upon what type of water we fish and flies we'll be using.

For example, one of my favorite set-ups for the Delaware is a standard WF floating line with large wet flies. A lot of times the fish are so shallow the sinking lines won't work in this application as you'll get hung-up too much. This is where the floating line and a non-typical approach comes into play using large wet flies.

This technique might not work so well for fish on the SR though due to the increased average current speed and where the fish hold in relation to it. The same flies may work, but the conditions may call for a different line completely with a sink tip. I guess you might called it a 3-line system with most water types in mind.