The Moonshine Journal

We're so close to hitting the water and we have all our basic gear ready but now… how the heck do we tie it all together (literally). Hands down my least favorite part about fly fishing is knots. I only know the very basic of basics about knots, I can tie my tippet to my leader with one knot and my tippet to my fly with another knot, that’s it. 2 knots that I know of in a world of zillions of knots. So today I’m just going to paste an infographic of those two knots because they’ve never failed...

Ok I promise you’re almost ready to fish, but now it's time for the exciting part! Purchasing some flies! I know in the last paragraph I talked some about flies and fly sizes and how they relate to your leader and tippet. When it comes to flies’ sizes are also counterintuitive, the larger the number the smaller the fly. Here’s a little graphic to demonstrate: When it comes to flies you want to try your hardest to “match the hatch”. What this means is that wherever you’re fishing there are bugs in and out of the water that are hatching...

Once you’ve got your leader, you’re going to need to grab some tippet line. I know, what the heck is tippet and why do I need another type of line!? Well tippet is an even lighter weight clear line that is then attached to your leader and then to the fly. The key to determining tippet size is understanding what tippet to use in order for it to be the strongest possible tippet without being noticed by the fish. Typically, you want your tippet to match the “X” of your leader or be one “X” lower than it. If the...

You’re just about ready to hit the water, but you still have a couple more things to add to the shopping list. Next is the leader. The leader is the line that’s attached to your colorful fly line and is clear. In the picture below you can see the thick clear line attached to the colored fly line. Leaders mostly come in two lengths - 7.5 to 9 foot, the length depends on the type of fishing you’re doing. If you’re using dries a long leader is better so the fish don’t spook at the sight of the fly line,...