Steve, Which do you have, 100 or 200 yards? Your fly line is only about a hundred feet.
What fish do you anticipate encountering? 100 yards is sufficient for most in-shore fishing, but 200 is better if there is the possibility of some lunkers or large jack-family reel burners. Just make sure that your backing test is 25% higher than your leader test. If your backing breaks first, bye-bye flyline. What having a full reel will do for you is increase the speed of your retreive, thus the market for large-arbor reels. Manufacturer's are coming up with step-up retrieve reels now, and I hope to get some demo-models soon. The worst thing that could happen with only 100 yds. of backing is that you get spooled and broken off at the class tippet. But that could also happen with 200, 300, or 500 yards. Do you have a spare spool with floating line? I highly recommend this, as fishing with poppers is a fun and effective way to fish the salt. Most of your flyfishing will be within 10' feet of the surface, and that area can be worked effectively with a floating line with a sinking leader and fly. Most game fish will readily come to the surface to take a fly, and then really hammer it. For distance casting, have someone show you how to build and cast shooting heads. You would want a spare spool for this set-up too, but you could really reach out to spooky fish with this set-up, although it would be tough from a tube, just getting started. An 8wt with floating, sinking, and shooting lines will serve a lot of saltwater requirements. Have fun, DonO ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve question I had my reel spooled with sinking line. As per the directions of His and Her fly shop How is giving the ocean fly fishing class on Sunday. My local fly shop only put on 100 yards of backing I have about 3\4 or a 1\2 inch of reel left Should he have filled it in? Or is 200 yards enough? If I go back he is going to charge me 8 bucks to put more backing on. The next fly shop is 50 miles away. Steve Clark
