A Ghost Tip is a Cortland line where most of the line is a floater, but the last 20 feet is a clear intermediate. These lines are also available on occasion on eBay.
I have found them very versatile for my fishing, and as a result have not fished the Cortland Camo intermediate line as much as I used to (which was a LOT!)
I have a trick with the Ghost Tip I would like to pass on... I fish stillwaters containing big, educated, wary rainbows. Not sinking your leader when fishing dries is a big no-no that results in fishless hours for the uninitiated flyfishers. I've tried leader sink, fluorocarbon, small amounts of shot, extra flies, etc. to get the last portion of the leader to sink reliably. I have found the easiest solution is to fish a Ghost Tip.
Generally, dry fly fishing produces two responses. The fish either grab the fly a few seconds after it hits the water -or- the fly sits there for 30-60 seconds while fish swim over and examine it. In the first instance, no leader has a chance to sink, and the fish are so aggressive that caution is thrown to the wind. In the second instance, it is essential that your leader sinks! The intermediate tip of the Ghost Tip line starts pulling the leader under, and even with small dries it 'stops' before pulling the fly under. You can still twitch the big dries and foam flies, but trying to twitch a small dry will pull it under.
Usually the Ghost Tip delivers just what is needed, sinking the leader up to the fly, and provides a convincing lure that had tricked some awesomely big fish to snatch the fly from the surface.
Try it, you might like it. The versatility of the line is outstanding. You can also, if you wish, grease the 20' clear portion of the line and turn it into a full floating line.
Wes Wada Bend, Oregon
On Thursday, February 26, 2004, at 07:01 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There has been some comments on different board about problems with memory coils with 555 Ghost tip lines. Seems they work well in warm temps, but not so well in the range you find at this time of year in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. The regular lines still work well down to as cold as you can stand to fish. Maybe 10 above.
Anyone else experienced similar problems?
