The whole shooting match

A shooting head can present a fly as accurately and cleanly as a weight-forward line, says LEE CUMMINGS who gives us the low-down on how to do it.

In the UK, we associate shooting-heads with distance. If you haven’t tried one, or even if you have, your image of shooting heads will be of a brick on a string, a heavy lump of fly line tied to light shooting-line.

To cast, heave the head into the air and fire it as fast as humanly possible. Expect the head to crash-land somewhere near the horizon. Modern shooting heads don’t need to be unsophisticated blunt instruments; even DIY heads can cast and handle well.

Those ideas about shooting heads stem from how we were taught to match shooting heads to rods and the rod weights we used (and to a lesser extent still use).

The best selling trout line size in the UK is #7. Historically, the standard way to make a shooting head is to take a cheap double-taper line two line-weights heavier than the rod rating, cut about 35 to 40ft from the DT line and start casting and trimming the head shorter until the combination of rod and line seem to suit one another – roughly speaking it means casting 30ft of a DT9 line.

In modern trout fishing a #7 line is towards the heavy end of the spectrum, a #9 line is off the trout scale and into saltwater, pike and salmon fishing. It’s worth thinking why we use heavier lines for saltwater, pike and salmon fishing; they are designed to match thick, strong leaders and deliver large flies. That means the front taper and tip of the line are designed so they punch out that leader and fly leader. By comparison modern trout lines have far less powerful front tapers and, most importantly, far slimmer tips.
It’s a common mistake to assume that a long front taper offers delicate presentation. In Modern Fly Lines, Bruce Richards, who designs Scientific Anglers fly lines, gives examples which illustrate the points well. If a line has a belly diameter of 0.055 inches and tapers to a tip diameter of 0.054 inches, that line will be very powerful whether the taper is 5ft or 20ft. Compare that to a line with the same belly diameter which tapers to 0.010 inches, regardless of the taper length the line with the thinner tip delivers more delicately.

So, if we make a DIY shooting head from a heavy fly-line we need to be aware that heavier fly lines have heavier tips, effectively less taper regardless of length and will turn over powerfully.

Because we associate shooting-heads with distance we tend to test them by casting as fast and far as possible, as a consequence it’s a miracle if the leader lands straight. When choosing a normal fly line we may well cast as far as possible but we also cast short and medium. Try that with a shooting head and the speed with which a fly can be presented is obvious.

Normal shooting head advice suggests letting the shooting line tighten with a tug against the reel so the head straightens in the air. Can’t argue it certainly works, and the head is shocked and bounces backwards, again landing in a heap. Cast a normal, full fly-line to distance and the line running through the rings and sagging in the air drags on the lower or rod-leg of the loop, that slight resistance helps the line land straight. Feathering the running-line as it shoots, allowing the line to run through the line-hand and applying slightly more drag, is an effective, standard way to improve turnover. Do the same with a shooting head soon cuts down on crash landings.

Buy July's magazine to find out how Lee forms the loops he uses and also how he uses a WF line to convert to a presentation shooting-head. In addition, Lee tells us how he matches the head to the rod.