Gear Advice: Prepping Lines for Fishing

Rob Kolakowski echoes a tip that Lefty Kreh shared with me twenty-odd years ago — showing how an indelible marker can be used to record a fly line’s weight as well as to indicate the transition between belly and running line (though you might consider putting your ID marks at the reel end of the line if you want to identify them on the spool). He also offers several suggestions for how to prep a brand-new line without integrated loops.
“The dash represents the number five and each dot represents the number one. So a dash and four dots equals nine for a nine weight line. You can also use the same marks to tell you how the line is tapered. For a weight forward put the long dash toward the leader.” In the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune.