twisted line

[fdking]

I bought a Daiwa 13ft tenkara rod last year and used it throughout the summer with an 11 ft tenkara centre furled line and a tapered 5ft tippet for upstream dry fly on my local river, and have caught some lovely trout up to 1.5lb. However, the whole of my line keeps twisting and I have to spend valuable fishing time untwisting the line. The rod has a rotating tip which I thought is supposed to prevent this. I use a mixture of 'bow and arrow' and overhead casting depending upon the surrounding hazards.  Looking on the internet, this may be cause by 'oval casting' where you pick up the line at a sideways angle than rotate the rod to bring the line forward, a so-called Belgian wind cast.  If this is the cause, then how can I avoid it when my dry fly drifts down to one side of me, which I then pick up and cast forward again, creating an oval?  I do this all the time with my rod/reel set up and don't get this problem.  I suppose I could let the fly drift further behind me then simply cast forward, but again I'm probably wasting time letting the fly drift down to where I've just been wading.  Another possibility is that the fly twists in the air.  This is normally a problem with winged flies, but I have been mainly using Klinkhammers, which I wouldn't have thought would twist, and again I don't get this problem with my rod/reel set up using the same flies.  Therefore I assumed it is something to do with the furled leader (I use this leader because there are a lot of overhanging trees/bushes along the river that I need to run my fly under, so I need some of my line on the water) and I've therefore bought an Airflo floating 10ft polyleader, which I hope will act more like a standard fly line and I'll try it this year.

Has anyone experienced this and overcome the problem?

Frank

[adric]

Hi Frank

I have never had this problem even through I use furled leaders for most of my fishing. The only time I do get twist in the furled leader is if I have to pull a fly from a branch. This is because you are putting excess pressure on the furled leader. It is possible to put a twist into a fly line when casting but I would not have though it possible when casting a furled leader with a tenkara rod.

I would not recommend using a polyleader as they do not have the correct suppleness or the correct profile to be successfully used with a tenkara rod.

I hope that this helps

Richard

[fdking]

Many thanks for the reply. I seem to be the only one with this problem as I also posted it on the USA Forum and again no one else reported this problem. Eliminating possibilities, I can't believe it is all the flies I use. It also seems doubtful it is my casting technique and no one else gets the problem with the furled leader. I don't think it is getting caught up in branches as it happens on open stretches of water. So the only thing left is the rod, and possibly the swivel at the end, as this seems to be unique to the Daiwa rod. If this is the case, then it seems to be a pretty bad design fault from Daiwa and I'm tempted to replace it. I thought about trying the polyleader as there have been positive reports on the Tenkara USA website, but I've also ordered a level fluorocarbon line and I'll give that a go. If the river conditions and weather are right, I'm hoping to go up to Ilkley for grayling fishing on the Wharfe. I'll probably be trotting most of the time, as fly fishing at this time of year is normally unproductive, but I'll take my Tenkara rod with me and try out a few permutations.

[springerman]

Hello Frank,
For me level fluorocarbon are the best lines to use for all your fishing.  However, I like to fish dry as well and have used the Fujino tapered lines to good effect.  Have a look at the web page of Tenkara Centre, they have them (as well as other sites).
Have a great season and good luck with the lines.
Ian.

[fdking]

I finally managed to get an afternoon on the river Lark on Easter Monday to try different methods for avoiding line twist. I had already bought and set up an 8ft airflo light trout floating polyleader so I tried that, connecting it to the lilian via a short length of braided fly line backing. There were no fish rising and the river was very low and clear, so I tried my standby of a duo with a size 14 parachute adams as dropper and a simple size 14 sawyers PTN as point. I tried not to do a figure of 8 cast, but straight up and down and the set-up cast very well without any twist. I had two bites on the adams, which surprised me so much I missed them, but caught 2 trout on the nymph, one of about 1lb and the other about 4 ozs - a nice wild trout with parr markings so it shows the native trout are breeding. I also caught a 2 inch minnow on the nymph! Before this, I tried a lure with my newly acquired 9ft 6wt rod and caught a 2lb trout and 3lb pike, so not a bad few hours. The polyleader was good with my Tenkara rod, but it tended to drag the dry fly if I wasn't really careful.

[fdking]

Fished the Lark again last week. River dropping after rain but a downstream breeze made upstream casting difficult on some sections. However, caught about 30 trout, up to about 1lb, mainly stocked fish but a few wild. In the morning I again caught them on a para-adams dropper and sawyers nymph, taking fish on both even though few fish were rising. In the afternoon, the mayflies started making an appearance and I caught some more fish on mayflies, some of the takes being particularly spectacular. Unfortunately, all the decent sized fish were sitting under the trees where the wind was at its strongest (I estimated one about 3lb). I started to get the line twist again, but with the polyleader it was only along the tippet, which got very twisted. I think it was the fish twisting in the water trying to get off the hook that is causing this, as the tippet was particularly twisted after playing the larger fish for a longer time. Funny that all the fish seem to twist in the same direction!