After lying virtually dormant for more than a half
century, the technology for making more efficient fly
lines was already stirring in 1959 when George Griffith
and his friends gathered at his home on the banks of
Michigan's AuSable River to launch Trout Unlimited. Six
years earlier, in preparation for the 1953 fishing
season, Cortland Line Company had introduced what was to
become the first commercially successful fly line made
with a new synthetic finish material.
Marketed as the Cortland 333 "Non-Sinkable" Fly Line,
the new line was made with a braided nylon center core
and featured a tough non-porous surface coating that
would not admit water and could not become waterlogged
in use as did the earlier standard oil impregnated fly
lines. Dry fly anglers of that era had learned to live
with the fact that the older oil impregnated silk lines
would become waterlogged after two or three hours of
steady fishing - and if they planned an all-day trip,
they would carry two or three reels, or spare spools,
with dry and freshly "dressed" lines. When one line
became waterlogged and began to sink, another reel with
a fresh line was brought into use. At night the wet
lines would be wound onto a line dryer or strung up
between tree limbs where circulating air could dry them
out. Then before use again, the dry lines were "dressed"
by rubbing down the surface with a special line dressing
compound that served to coat the porous oil impregnated
surface to delay the water absorption process as long as
possible.
One can now understand the excitement and enthusiastic
acceptance to the new 333 lines that would float high,
hour after hour, for easy pick-up - and elimination of
the need for dressing. Soon other fly line manufacturers
perfected their own synthetic finish formulations and by
1959 a wide range of the new generation fly lines was
being produced and marketed by the other leading
manufacturers of the day - including Ashaway, Gladding,
Newton, Sunset, Marathon, Shakespeare, and others.
Slowly, but surely, the old oil impregnated fly lines
faded away to their place in history. Now they are
highly prized by collectors of antique tackle.
There was another basic difference in the manufacturing
procedure for lines in that era compared to the modern
lines we use today. The center braid was tapered. Using
a uniquely modified braiding machine, highly skilled
operators would begin the braiding of a line with
sixteen small threads to produce a braid size that would
represent the diameter of the tip of the line. The
tapered shape was accomplished by removing the small
threads and replacing them, one by one, splicing in a
larger replacing thread - gradually, on a carefully
designed plan, until eventually the body diameter was
reached. I recall that in order to make a standard 30
yard double tapered line, the operator was required to
make 96 thread changes to get the taper up and back down
again on the reverse end. One operator could produce
only eight tapered lines during an 8 hour work shift. It
was a long and tedious process.
The adoption and wide use of synthetic coatings solved
many of the fly line performance problems of the day -
but the movement also created a new problem. Since the
early fly lines were first created - probably in England
- they were identified by sizes expressed with letter
designations that related to diameter. An "H" line
measured .025" in diameter; a "G" was .030"; a "D" was
.045"; a "C" was .050", etc. Thus, an "HDH" double
tapered line for trout fishing was made to taper from a
tip diameter of .025" (H) to a body diameter of .045"
(D) then back down to .025" (H) again to complete the
line. A "GBF" was a three diameter weight-forward taper
design measuring .030" to .055" to .035" for the running
line. The letter designations served the purpose very
well - as long as all line manufacturers produced lines
with braided silk with an oil impregnated finish
coating. The weight factors were much the same - and an
HDH silk line made by one manufacturer would weigh very
close to that of an HDH produced by another maker using
the same process.
It is important to understand that it is the weight of
the line that loads the fly rod, and that the diameter
is of secondary importance. The problem occurred when
individual manufacturers adopted different synthetic
materials and different finish formulations with varying
weight factors. It was impossible to maintain weight
consistancies by designating line sizes by the measured
diameter. A line made of one material with an HDH size
designation could weight as much as 25% more than
another with the same marking produced from another
material. The problem was further intensified with the
entry of sinking lines. An HDH sinking line was
obviously much heavier than an HDH floating line, even
though the diameters may have been identical.
It was during a 1959 convention of the American Fishing
Tackle Manufacturers Association that the Line Division
collectively decided it was absolutely necessary to
devise industry standards for fly lines to bring order
to a chaotic situation. A committee consisting of Art
Agnew, Sunset Line Co.; Jack Daugherty of Gladding; Bob
Crandall of Ashaway, George Clement of Newton Line Co -
and myself from Cortland Line Co was entrusted with the
assignment. Although not an official member of the
committee, a key role was played by the late Myron
Gregory, a tournament caster of note with the Golden
Gate Casting Club of San Francisco. Unmindful of the
fact that all were direct competitors, the members of
the committee worked together for months to formalize
the AFTMA Fly Line Standards. The AFTMA Fly Line
Standards - based on the grain weight of the first 30
feet of line regardless of material density or taper
configuration - may not be a perfect system but it has
stood the test of time and have been followed
religiously by all of the worlds fly line manufacturers
for more than 40 years.
Today, any angler with the need to select a line to
balance with a 6-weight fly rod can by a #6 line -
regardless of the brand, whether level, double of
weight-forward taper, floating, sinking or sink-tip -
and feel secure in the knowledge the line he has
selected will match the rod. This was a real
breakthrough and many consider the establishment of the
AFTMA Fly Line Standards one of the most important
factors in the sport of fly fishing during modern
history.
A major development in the evolution of the modern fly
line occurred during the early 1960's when a grand old
gentleman named Leon P. Martuch decided to try to find
an easier way to make a tapered fly line. With a
background in chemistry from his association with Dow
Chemical Co., and a good measure of curious
inventiveness, he devised a method of making a tapered
fly line by forming a tapered coating over straight
level braid. With these lines, he formed a new company
called Scientific Anglers, located in Midland, Michigan
- now operated as a division of the 3M Company.
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Labor and material
costs were rising and it was apparent to the other
manufacturers that the procedure of making lines by
tapering the finish over level braid was a much more
cost effective way of producing lines than the time
consuming method of braiding in the taper. So each
individual manufacturer lost no time in developing
their own methods . . . and, to my knowledge, all
tapered fly lines are made in this manner today.
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The basic concept of tapering the finish over a level
braided core provided much more flexibility - and led to
the development of a wide range of lines for specialized
fly fishing purposes than could never have been made
with the older traditional manufacturing methods. During
the 60's and 70's the leading manufacturers were locked
in a fierce competitive duel for market share. The
result was a creative binge to produce new and useful
specialty lines.
Sinking lines - in a variety of densities that will sink
slow, or fast, or extra fast - or super sinkers that
really get down quickly. There are Sink-Tip lines with
10', 20' and 30' sinking sections - Nymph-Tip lines with
a built-in strike indicator. There are specialized taper
configurations for larger wind resistant bass bugs and
for heavy duty salt water use - and Shooting Heads for
making long casts with less effort. The innovative
approach to fly line designs has never really ended and
is still very active today.
The fortunate recipient for all this activity is the fly
rod angler. The fly fisherman of today never had it so
good. By selecting a fly line made by one of the
reputable manufacturers, he - or she - can enjoy almost
flawless performance in fishing with a fly rod in
virtually any fishing situation. ~ J. Leon Chandler (Comparadun)
