learning to fly fish.....questions

[Travis Swift]

I bought my first fly rod last night (9ft 5wt as recommended from members on here).  It was an expensive one on sale that came spooled with the line and leader attached.  I also grabbed some 7x Seaguar Fluorocarbon tippet that I'm going to attach to the leader.  How long of a tipped do I need to tie on the leader?  My plan is to fish a PJ's sculpin/peach 1/125th ounce jig and float to start with on this trip and see how that goes.  I will be fishing it from a boat the whole time, forgot to mention that.  I also attempted to tie my own mega worms which I might try out as well.  I'm going to stop at Lilleys and grab a few flys......what are good ones to start with?  Also how do you tie a tandem or dropper rig when you guys fish 2 at a time.  Do you just tie the second fly off from the hook bend of the first one?  I thought about tying some sort of tandem midge or a midge off the jig etc.   Thanks in advance everyone. 

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[Travis Swift]

also should I stick with that 7x fluro tippet or do the 6x fluro tippet instead?  again how long of a tippet do I want/need?

[snagged in outlet 3]

If you are down there maybe stop by Lilleys and have one of the guys help line you out.  I don't like 7X personally.  I drop the second fly off the bend of the first fly. 

[Travis Swift]

11 minutes ago, snagged in outlet 3 said:

If you are down there maybe stop by Lilleys and have one of the guys help line you out.  I don't like 7X personally.  I drop the second fly off the bend of the first fly. 

I use 2 pound line on my jig rods all the time so I figured might as well go with 2 pound tippet on the fly rod.  But maybe the tippet is a different animal than regular 2 pound line?

[Seth]

I tie my droppers to the hook bend of the top fly/jig with a Uni knot and then add the dropper 10-12" below that. For tippet, I just use a couple feet of Pline CX premium in moss green for Pline Fluoroclear in 2#.

I smoked the trout on an olive micro with a gold head this past weekend. If you have to buy small jigs anyways, I would recommend picking up a couple of the Turner Micro's. They aren't cheap ($3.50 vs $1.50 or something like that), but they are VERY hardy! As long as you don't break off a lot, they should last through a ton of fish. Even my hand tied micros seem to be a lot hardier than my regular 1/16-1/8oz jigs. Not sure if it's due to using finer thread that cinches down better on the collar or the trout not yanking on the tail of the marabou or what.

[Travis Swift]

thanks for the info Seth!

[fshndoug]

7x is pretty fine tippet material.I use 6x 0r 5x trouthunter  flourocarbon tippet most of the time with excellent results.I usually tie on a 18-24 inch piece with a surgeons knot to my leader.Try stripping a size 8-10 wooly bugger in olive ,brown or black with little or no flow,the fish will wack them on taney.soft hackles also work well with an orange or red body in size 14-18.Try casting out from the boat and let it swing in the current till it is almost downstream  from you and strip every once in a while,they will really smack it .I like to use a sink tip line or a full sinking line to get those flies down in the water column with a 4 or five foot tippet in 5 x. you can buy a sinking leader 10-15 feet with loops and attach it to your regular flyline loop so you don't need a  extra spool Phil can show you how

[Lancer09]

For Taney I only drop to 7 x in real clear and low, or fishing midges just to get the line through the eye.

Depending on the fly type kind of varies whether or not I leave a long tag end and tie the dropper to the lead fly that way, or down off of the bend. On a real gradual round hook like a scud I like the tag end just because I feel like the bend is so gradual, I don't want the dropper line effecting the hook up ratio on the lead fly. That's my reasoning and I'm sticking to it. You can't change my mind.. kidding, but that's just how I started doing it, and have done it since. 

For leader my standard trout leader is a 7.5 foot 5X leader, then I usually drop anywhere from 2 to 6 foot of tippet off the end of that. Building them is easy too, and I prefer a blood not vs whatever it's called that other people do. (I just like the blood knot)

Easy things for Taney are things like eggs, 14 and 16 gray, and olive scuds, small midges and pheasant tails are hard to beat. 

For a new guy try some leeches out too and let those swing in the current. Find a seam, and just let that fly finish right at the edge or pass through it and hold on. 

The advice I've always given, that always gets a punch in the arm from when I taught my wife to cast.. Just let the rod do the work.

 

[Travis Swift]

thanks for the info so far everyone, I appreciate it.  I'm probably going to mainly stick to micro type jigs and float this first trip but might venture into other flies a little as well depending on how the week goes.  On the Mega Worm that I have tied up, I tied it in white with the baby blanket yarn....how do you fish those, do you fish them with a float or do you fish them on the bottom.  I have them tied with a both a jig head and with a  plain hook. 

[Seth]

If you're fishing still water and using an indicator, grab some zebra midges and white thread jigs. Those produce very well when on midging fish. If you tie at all, those are about as easy as it gets for tying.