Mending Fly Line

[kennyw]

I live in Florida and largely fish saltwater so I have always thought mending was an unnecessary skill for me. However I recently realized learning to mend my fly line could be just as useful here in a few situations. Correct me if I’m wrong but I’m under the impression that one of the main uses of mending is to take a large belly out of your fly line. If so this could be very useful for fishing dock lights during the summer which typically require a dead drift across a strong current. Can anyone suggest any YouTube videos or articles explaining different mending techniques?

[Bob Riggins]

I also live in Florida and mostly fly fish in saltwater, so mending is not one of my strong suits. When fishing mountain streams, I mend line mainly to account for differing current speeds. For example, it I have a fast current in front of me and I’m casting into a slower current on the other side, I will do an upstream mend to throw some slack into the line in the fast current, so the line doesn’t drag the fly though the slow current. I rarely encounter this in saltwater since the currents tend to be consistent over the casting range unless you are in a narrow channel.

Again, I’m not a mending expert by any means, but to my knowledge, the purpose of a mend is to put a belly in your fly line, not to take one out. If I am dead drifting by a dock, the drift is usually fairly short, so I just let some line feed out as it drifts. This avoids the belly you would get with an upcurrent mend.

The one place I do use a mend is when I want to get a fly deep without the fly dragging toward me as it sinks. For example, if I want to get a fly deep next to a seawall or dock, I will use something similar to a pile (or parachute) cast to pile up some slack over the fly so that it drops straight down rather than dragging back toward me as it sinks. If it is really windy and a pile cast is not working, I may use a rolling mend straight toward the fly to accomplish the same thing.

I’ve never seen a video on saltwater line mending, but Orvis has a nice little video on mending line in its How to section. It is not really hard to learn, you are basically just flipping some slack in the line in a particular direction (upstream, downstream or directly toward the fly).

[Zach Matthews]

I think you’re right on the money. Best tip on mending is to lift the rod to 10 oclock in the air before flicking the tip. It’s a lot like making an underpowered cast or a sideways roll cast. You just don’t want to move the tip of the line out of the water.

Zach

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