Step-By-Step: Rig A Fly Reel

Materials
I use 16-strand hollow-core braid when I rig my fly reels because it’s thinner in diameter and offers more abrasion resistance than dacron of a similar breaking strength while maintaining the same properties that make dacron a popular backing material and avoiding the rough handling of solid core four or eight-strand braids. The 40lb Diamond Braid Hollow Core I’m using in this step-by-step has a diameter of about .33mm while 30lb Cortland Micron, one of the thinnest dacron backings, is about 40% larger at .48mm. This strength-to-diameter advantage of hollow-core braid allows for increased backing capacity but more importantly that thinner diameter gives you a larger effective arbor when fighting a fish that takes you in to your backing.
I minimize braid’s two main drawbacks, slickness and price, by combining it with a short run of dacron. By using dacron next to the spool arbor I eliminate the possibility of the slicker braid spinning on the spool while under pressure. And on larger capacity reels where the cost of hollow-core braid can be significant I can use a longer run of the cheaper dacron to help fill the spool. In the following steps I’ll show you how I set up my personal reels but you can use any ratio of dacron to braid that you choose.


Materials
I use 16-strand hollow-core braid when I rig my fly reels because it’s thinner in diameter and offers more abrasion resistance than dacron of a similar breaking strength while maintaining the same properties that make dacron a popular backing material and avoiding the rough handling of solid core four or eight-strand braids. The 40lb Diamond Braid Hollow Core I’m using in this step-by-step has a diameter of about .33mm while 30lb Cortland Micron, one of the thinnest dacron backings, is about 40% larger at .48mm. This strength-to-diameter advantage of hollow-core braid allows for increased backing capacity but more importantly that thinner diameter gives you a larger effective arbor when fighting a fish that takes you in to your backing.
I minimize braid’s two main drawbacks, slickness and price, by combining it with a short run of dacron. By using dacron next to the spool arbor I eliminate the possibility of the slicker braid spinning on the spool while under pressure. And on larger capacity reels where the cost of hollow-core braid can be significant I can use a longer run of the cheaper dacron to help fill the spool. In the following steps I’ll show you how I set up my personal reels but you can use any ratio of dacron to braid that you choose.
Step One
Step Two
Note: if you’re rigging a very large fly reel with a lot of backing capacity and want to save some money you can use dacron to fill part of the spool in this step. As an example, when I rig a Tibor Pacific I wind about 200yds of 30lb dacron on before I move on to step three.
Step Two
Note: if you’re rigging a very large fly reel with a lot of backing capacity and want to save some money you can use dacron to fill part of the spool in this step. As an example, when I rig a Tibor Pacific I wind about 200yds of 30lb dacron on before I move on to step three.
Step Three
Step Four
Step Four
Step Five
Josh