Thread: Learning to Fly Fish

The Tools of Fly-fishing, instruction and reference manual by Jack Mackenzie. Absolute legend of a fishing guide, he's put all the essentials in a short A4 book with clear colour pictures. And the $150 fly rod packages on Ali-Express are actually exceptional for the price, they rival my air flo rod.

FYI when referring to weight of the rod it means effectively the lower the number the lighter it is, so a 4 weight will be more delicate than a 10 weight but the 10 weight will have more power than the 4 weight. A 6 weight is a happy middle ground of being light enough to present files to fish without spooking them but have enough grunt to actually get the fly to the fish if there's wind or you need to get some distance.
The line should be matched to your rod so when buying a combo male sure the line on the real matches the rod or at least near enough. It used to be commonplace to over-line a rod (eg putting a 6wt line on a 5wt rod) but that's no longer necessary as many lines already run heavy.
Once you get a setup, if you want to practice in a park or backyard make sure you tie something like a small piece of wool to the leader end. It will stop your Indiana Jones impersonations (it needs a little weight at the end or will non stop be like a bull whip).