"Cooking Up Some Lines:" How Fly Lines Are Made

As a follow-up to our recent article on selecting the right fly line (see “How to Choose a Fly Line” by Bruce Richards), this week on MidCurrent we publish Zach Matthews’s thorough look at how fly lines are made. “Cooking Up Some Lines” goes into great detail on what materials are actually used in fly line construction and why they are important in line care and performance.
Excerpt: “A FLY LINE seems like a pretty simple product – little more than some plastic material gooped around a thin piece of string. The whole thing can be made to float or sink by adding microballoons or heavy metal dust in the coating. However, this apparent simplicity can lull us into overlooking just how much we ask a fly line to do. It has to help us cast by remaining slick; it must withstand the rigors of constant casting, being dragged over rocks, and being stepped on; and it must help us keep our flies in the strike zone, whether it’s on the surface or 10 feet down.”