Placing the fly on your rod during breaks

Fly mounted on the rod for transport

Martin Joergensen

Many fly rods are equipped with a hook rest where the fly can be placed while you are not fishing. This hook rest is commonly located right above the handle, which can be a fine place to set your fly - providing your leader is significantly shorter than one rod length...

If you fish a long leader, your will have to pull the fly line and part of the leader through your top eye before the line is tight and the fly is firmly set. When later you are ready to start fishing again, you will time and again experience problems with getting the leader and fly line through the eye and get enough line out to just barely load the rod for your first cast. In some cases the weight of the fly line will even pull on the whole assembly, and you fly will very inconveniently wind up in the top eye - or even worse: a couple of eyes down the rod.

In stead of using the hook rest, utilize one of the eyes in the middle of the rod. Pass the leader below the reel while you still have a bit of fly line out of the tip of the rod, and set it in the eye, which is closest to the fly, and which you can reach while holding the rod in the handle. Pass the leader round the reel base or follow the perimeter of the reel to avoid harming the leader on any sharp edges.

When you resume fishing, simply lift off the fly, slip the leader free of the reel base and start blind casting immediately. The little bit of fly line above the tip, will load the rod and you can work out line quickly.