Mending – Lift, Don’t Flip

Deneki Outdoors

In the last few weeks, we have highlighted some of the ways small mends can be used to impart movement on a fly while also keeping it in the zone for a longer period of time. Today, we wanted to give you a little tip in order to improve your mending in any situation. 

A common problem we see our guests make while mending their fly is that the mend pulls the fly directly out of the desired zone, rather than keeping it there as long as possible. This primarily happens when the fisherman takes their rod tip and pulls the line directly from a downstream to an upstream position. Sure, the line is redirected and will now drift nicely, but your fly has probably moved four feet from where it started and is all of the way up in the top of water column.

So to fix this problem, when it comes time to mend, the first step is to lift your rod tip to get as much of the fly line off of the surface of the water as possible. Then, redirect your rod tip upstream as needed and you should almost be able to set your line in the place needed to let your drift continue. By lifting your line off of the water before you try and redirect it, you eliminate all of that water tension that would otherwise be pulling your fly out of the zone.

So, the next time you’re throwing a good mend into your line, think lift then redirect, rather than just trying to flip it upstream.

Originally published here.