Floating Line For Pike?

[Breck]

Spent most of last Spring, Summer, and Fall trying to figure out pike on the fly. Heaviest rods I have are 8-weights and I have had varied success using them with full sinking lines for pike here in the lakes of NW Montana. Casting big flies hasn't really been an issue.

I've noticed that several of the pike/musky-specific fly lines are WFF lines. What would be the advantage to using a floating line for these fish, unless you are particularly trying to use topwater popper type flies?

One thing that really embarrasses me is that my girlfriend has outfished me for pike using ultra light spinning gear for perch. Oh well. Keeps her interested and wanting to fish with me.

 

[Ryan Smart]

Spent most of last Spring, Summer, and Fall trying to figure out pike on the fly. Heaviest rods I have are 8-weights and I have had varied success using them with full sinking lines for pike here in the lakes of NW Montana. Casting big flies hasn't really been an issue.

I've noticed that several of the pike/musky-specific fly lines are WFF lines. What would be the advantage to using a floating line for these fish, unless you are particularly trying to use topwater popper type flies?

One thing that really embarrasses me is that my girlfriend has outfished me for pike using ultra light spinning gear for perch. Oh well. Keeps her interested and wanting to fish with me.

I'm not familiar with the lakes that you're fishing, but most of the success that I've had fishing for pike has been in relatively shallow water, so a floating line works fine. I'm not sure that it's necessarily an advantage, but using the same line for surface flies and subsurface is less messing around. Take all this with a grain of salt though, because all of my pike fishing experience is in MN and WI, but I would think behavior would be fairly similar in Montana. Even when I'm fishing subsurface flies, a lot of the strikes are.right when the fly hits the water or shortly after, so depth isn't much of a issue.

I will say that when I was gearing up to fly fish for muskies in NW Wisconsin after moving there several years ago, the recommended line for them (in rivers) was an intermediate.

Do you think that most of your fishing wi be in the top few feet of water, or are the fish feeding a lot deeper in your lakes? I would think that will tell you what the best line for you is. In the Midwest and Canada, I think generally pike fly fishing is a shallow water game, so those are the most common lines.

ryan

 

[Hem]

Spent most of last Spring, Summer, and Fall trying to figure out pike on the fly. Heaviest rods I have are 8-weights and I have had varied success using them with full sinking lines for pike here in the lakes of NW Montana. Casting big flies hasn't really been an issue.

I've noticed that several of the pike/musky-specific fly lines are WFF lines. What would be the advantage to using a floating line for these fish, unless you are particularly trying to use topwater popper type flies?

One thing that really embarrasses me is that my girlfriend has outfished me for pike using ultra light spinning gear for perch. Oh well. Keeps her interested and wanting to fish with me.

My floater is a Rio Outbound Short Coldwater. This line will propel anything .
It also launches itself really far. Great in the wind.