Stretch in fly lines is usually not something fly fisherman talk about, and it honestly hasn't come up in my mind until recently. In the conventional fishing world if you told a competitive bass angler that his line had a 30 % stretch rate there is a good chance that he would be shopping for a new line that had a smaller stretch rate when he got home that day. Why do you ask? The more stretch in a line means less hook penetration on the hookset and less sensitivity/feel you have in your line to feel subtle takes from the fish. I fish allot out of a kayak which is not a fixed platform when you set the hook. Unless you are anchored there is a good chance that kayak will move into your hookset while setting the hook, decreasing hook penetration causing bounced or lost fish.
I was doing a 1 v 1 with my son this summer kayak fishing for snakeheads I was using a fly rod, and my son was using a bait caster. I lost 3 fish that day, all of them came off a few seconds after being hooked. I took the loss that day my son caught one snakehead and two bass I ended up with just one snakehead and had to pay my son $200 dollars to honor the bet I made to him earlier. After forking over 200 to my son I started questioning my skills, I have bounced fish before but never that many in a day. I was using a new fly line that I hadn't previously used on the kayak before and a freshly tied fly with a sharp hook. I wanted to know what had happened wrong that day on the water. So, detective Fred was put on assignment, the fly is one that I have caught 100's of snakeheads on in the past, same leader set up That I have used for years. The only thing I could find different was the fly line which was a high-speed low drag fancy new fully clear fly line.
So I did an experiment I went out fishing with same line on the kayak 5 times in a row, now I didn’t have as bad of results as that day but did notice an increase rate of lost fish after they were hooked, this was no double blind study and I was actively trying to set the hook harder to keep the fish buttoned. After these five outings I was convinced that it had to be the line stretch, I knew a little about fly line stretch before this but never consider it a reason to lose fish. So, I took to the innerwebs and conducted some research and found out that most fly lines with a mono core have a 30% stretch rate, all clear lines have a mono core . To further my study, I searched for lines that I could use with low stretch rates and Rio and Airflo from what I found are the only brands that mention stretch rates of their lines. With Airflo having the lowest stretch rate that I could find, I purchased their flats power taper with a listed 6% stretch rate. After I got the Ine in the mail I took to the water in my kayak and fished for the day, I didn’t lose a single fish that day and noticed a better/harder connection to the fish during the hookset. After just one day I knew I would never go back to the clear line on the kayak unless I had to. On the following fishing outing I used the airflo line on my boat and set the hook on one fish and lost it after a few seconds , in my mind I was like here we go again , only to observe shortly after that the hook on my fly had almost completely straighten out during the hookset , as I was feeling really proud of myself for accomplishing this I couldn't help but to think that the line had definitely had the 6% stretch rate as advertised to generate that kind of power to straighten out the hook like that . I dont have the pic with me at the moment but will post it later.
Here is a nice article on Fly line stretch, better than I could ever do lol https://www.flyfishingkingdom.com/fly-fishing-lines/the-science-behind-fly-line-stretch/
Rio info on fly line core and stretch rates https://farbank.com/pages/rio-know-your-core
I was doing a 1 v 1 with my son this summer kayak fishing for snakeheads I was using a fly rod, and my son was using a bait caster. I lost 3 fish that day, all of them came off a few seconds after being hooked. I took the loss that day my son caught one snakehead and two bass I ended up with just one snakehead and had to pay my son $200 dollars to honor the bet I made to him earlier. After forking over 200 to my son I started questioning my skills, I have bounced fish before but never that many in a day. I was using a new fly line that I hadn't previously used on the kayak before and a freshly tied fly with a sharp hook. I wanted to know what had happened wrong that day on the water. So, detective Fred was put on assignment, the fly is one that I have caught 100's of snakeheads on in the past, same leader set up That I have used for years. The only thing I could find different was the fly line which was a high-speed low drag fancy new fully clear fly line.
So I did an experiment I went out fishing with same line on the kayak 5 times in a row, now I didn’t have as bad of results as that day but did notice an increase rate of lost fish after they were hooked, this was no double blind study and I was actively trying to set the hook harder to keep the fish buttoned. After these five outings I was convinced that it had to be the line stretch, I knew a little about fly line stretch before this but never consider it a reason to lose fish. So, I took to the innerwebs and conducted some research and found out that most fly lines with a mono core have a 30% stretch rate, all clear lines have a mono core . To further my study, I searched for lines that I could use with low stretch rates and Rio and Airflo from what I found are the only brands that mention stretch rates of their lines. With Airflo having the lowest stretch rate that I could find, I purchased their flats power taper with a listed 6% stretch rate. After I got the Ine in the mail I took to the water in my kayak and fished for the day, I didn’t lose a single fish that day and noticed a better/harder connection to the fish during the hookset. After just one day I knew I would never go back to the clear line on the kayak unless I had to. On the following fishing outing I used the airflo line on my boat and set the hook on one fish and lost it after a few seconds , in my mind I was like here we go again , only to observe shortly after that the hook on my fly had almost completely straighten out during the hookset , as I was feeling really proud of myself for accomplishing this I couldn't help but to think that the line had definitely had the 6% stretch rate as advertised to generate that kind of power to straighten out the hook like that . I dont have the pic with me at the moment but will post it later.
Here is a nice article on Fly line stretch, better than I could ever do lol https://www.flyfishingkingdom.com/fly-fishing-lines/the-science-behind-fly-line-stretch/
Rio info on fly line core and stretch rates https://farbank.com/pages/rio-know-your-core
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