All fly lines have memory, as Bruce Richards, the longtime Scientific Anglers line designer, laid out for MidCurrent years ago. A fly line’s core and its plastic coating both hold the shape they’re stored in, and the colder the line gets, the stiffer it gets and the harder it holds that shape, which is why a line that shot flat off the deck in August comes off the reel like a slinky on the first below-freezing morning of October.
Line choice and stretching beat the coils; dipping and de-icer manage the guide ice; a basket keeps stripped line out of the snow and the water. A cleaned and dressed line sheds water and shoots better, but dressing won’t take a coil out; the coil lives in the line’s plastic coating and the core inside it, and it comes out with a stretch or with a line rated for the temperature you’re fishing.
The fall window
Fall mornings routinely put the air at or below freezing while the water is still in the 40s and 50s, the same band where bass and musky do their pre-winter feeding. Largemouth stay on the attack over thinning flats as the shallows cool through the 50s, and smallmouth feed roughly between 50 and 80°F; research on bass and temperature going back to the 1930s finds feeding drops off sharply below about 50°F, so the fat part of the window is the 50s and low 60s, with feeding compressing into shorter windows as the water falls toward the low 40s. Fall musky fishing in the Upper Midwest builds from early September and runs to the season’s close, late November into December depending on the state and the water, with fish bulking up for winter and moving between summer and wintering water.
A morning that starts below freezing often climbs back past it by mid-morning, the ice stops forming, and the memory fishes out as the line warms, so the first hour is when memory and ice are at their worst.
Why lines coil in the cold
A fly line is a core, usually a braided nylon multifilament, a solid monofilament, or a braided monofilament, inside a plastic coating that gives the line its diameter, density, and float. Most coatings are PVC softened with plasticizers; Airflo builds its coatings from polyurethane instead. The amount of plasticizer tunes the line for climate, more of it for a softer coldwater line, less for a stiffer line that holds up in tropical heat. Supple braided multifilament cores resist cold coiling best, while mono and braided-mono cores shoot well but tend to coil until the day warms up. Plasticizers also migrate out of PVC over the years, so a line that has gone stiff and coily with age has hardened for good; replace it.
One construction to avoid for cold work: anything on a no-stretch core, Kevlar or gel-spun. Straightening a line means stretching the coating past the set, and a core that won’t stretch keeps the coil in the line all day.
Match the line to the water
Line makers split their lineups at roughly air over 70°F and water over 60: tropical coatings above that, coldwater below. Many bass and musky tapers sit on the warm side of that split by design. The SA Mastery Bass Bug, for one, is overweighted by two line sizes and built with a warm-weather coating, which turns a deer-hair bug over in July heat and coils hard in November. A useful rule of thumb: if your fall water is below about 55 to 60°F and the spool still carries a summer or tropical big-fly taper, the line is causing most of the coiling, and a coldwater or standard freshwater taper takes most of the memory out.
Some of us fish stiff tropical lines well down into the 50s and 40s anyway and just stretch them straight every so often, and that works; it also means fighting the line all day, and the coldwater taper removes the fight. For lighter fall smallmouth work, cold-weather regulars single out the Cortland 444 Sylk, about $70 and rated by Cortland for 30-to-50°F water, for staying limber, though it’s a light-line taper that tops out at 8-weight; for turning over bigger bass flies, Cortland’s Streamer taper and the standard freshwater SA and RIO tapers are built for the same cold. Airflo’s polyurethane stiffens less in the cold than PVC and holds less memory, a report that comes from anglers who fish the lines, not just from Airflo. Every line keeps some memory, though, and the core still matters: Airflo’s first polyurethane lines in the late 1980s rode no-stretch Kevlar cores and coiled badly in the cold, so the advantage belongs to the modern material. Shop consensus adds one trade: the softer coldwater coatings tend to nick and peel faster than tropical ones. Expect $80 to $130 for a premium replacement; a standard SA Amplitude freshwater taper or a Cortland Pike Musky line runs about $100.
For musky and pike, Stephen Wisner, a Wisconsin fall-musky guide who wrote up his fall system for Cortland, carries a spread of sink rates, floating through fast-sinking, rather than one line, since fall fish shift between summer and wintering water. Late-season specialists push to 600-to-800-grain full-sink heads, big flies, and a slow retrieve as the water keeps cooling.
Stretch it straight
A firm stretch is safe: modern coatings stretch more than the nylon cores under them, and a PVC line takes 25 to 30 percent elongation before it breaks, so a hard pull straightens the set without damaging anything. On a cold morning, stretch the head and the running line you plan to cast: pull three-to-four-foot segments firmly between your hands and release each one slowly rather than letting it snap back, since the slow release helps the line hold straight. From a boat, make a clearing cast when you finish, since stretched line lands on the deck upside down and tangles if you shoot it as it lies. Stretch the leader while you’re at it; mono and fluorocarbon stiffen in the cold the same way the line does.
Ice in the guides
Ice starts as water clinging to the line and the guide rings, flash-freezing in below-freezing air, and the buildup grows a little every time line travels through the guides. Anglers who fish through it put the working threshold around 27°F air: above that, occasional clearing keeps up; below it, the ice comes faster and harder, and below about 20°F, for most of us, frozen guides are part of the morning. The water is warmer than the air on these days, so dip the rod tip in the river or the lake and the ice melts off quickly, though it reforms. Carry warm water in a thermos for a stubborn plug, warm rather than boiling. Melt ice off instead of picking at it, since chipping at a frozen guide can snap the insert, the small ring set inside the frame. And in that coldest first hour, fish shorter and strip less; less wet line moving over cold metal grows the plug more slowly.
Paste de-icers slow the buildup and make ice easier to clear, and none of them stop it. Loon’s Stanley’s Ice-Off Paste, about $9 for an ounce, is the purpose-built option; Mucilin, about $7, sheds water from the guides and doubles as a floatant; lip balm from your pocket does a rougher version of the same job. Keep all of it on the guides, and keep petroleum- and solvent-based sprays off the line entirely; they can be hard on line coatings.
| Option | Cost | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Dipping the guides | Free | Melts ice quickly; it reforms |
| Warm-water thermos | Free | Clears a stubborn plug; warm, not boiling |
| Stanley’s Ice-Off Paste | About $9 | Purpose-built paste for guides and line; delays buildup |
| Mucilin | About $7 | Water-shedding film; also a floatant |
| Lip balm | A few dollars | Wax film on guides; reapply often |
Line, reel, and deck
A stripping basket keeps stripped line off the snow and out of the water, where it otherwise picks up the water that becomes guide ice and knots itself in the bargain. Freshwater baskets run lighter and lower-profile than the deep, heavy baskets built for wind and surf, and within that size, solid or deep-welled designs hold line better than shallow mesh. Cold adds one requirement: brittle plastic cracks, so favor a flexible material. The Ahrex Flexistripper, about $76, is a popular option, and a dishpan remains the cheap classic.
On a boat, pick up the slack as soon as the cast lands; a sinking line left slack drops a sagging belly that hangs the fly on the bottom. Keep the reel out of the water entirely; reel ice is harder to clear than guide ice, and a locked spool or drag wants gentle thawing, inside a jacket or with warm water, rather than force on the handle.
