Why Ultralight Fly Fishing?

If I am going to be perfectly honest, my early beliefs on tiny fly rods was that there was a very limited place for them in fly fishing.  Several years ago, I recall a fellow Ohioan posting on a message board about the joys of fishing light rods for smallmouth bass and other hard-fighting species and I stopped just short of calling him an idiot.  I think.  I have since apologized, personally, to this individual.  My eyes were opened to the true capabilities of fly rods 3wt and smaller by...shocker...experience using them.  Roughly four years ago I made the most impactful purchase of my fly fishing life: a TFO Finesse 1wt rod with matching TFO BVK Click reel.  My intentions were simply to use it for small stream trout and panfish.  Those intentions changed after a few incidental catches of other non-target species that showed me how capable that little fly rod truly was.

In my experience, the great equalizer in utilizing a small rod like the Finesse 1wt is tippet size.  The biggest obstacle, on the other hand, is wind.  Heavy winds make casting a light rod much more difficult.  My first few trips carrying this rod in a small stream known to have some good-sized carp mixed in with the bass, I strictly avoided the urge to cast at them.  I was confident I could get them to eat, I had no belief I could land one.  It had simply never occurred to me just how much heat could be put on a fish using 4x sized tippet.  4x is not overkill on a 1wt, but at the same time is not really underkill on something like a typical Ohio largemouth or smallmouth bass.  It's a happy medium.  The individual fish that first opened my eyes was this dandy SC largemouth that ate a size 6 Murdich Minnow in plain sight right in front of me.  It was a chance encounter while I was picking off coppernose bluegills.  I happened to have the small streamer in my box, thought "Why not give it shot," and look at how it turned out.

Of course, where this UL setup is truly at home is on small stream trout.  The tight quarters found on the smaller streams, coupled with typically shorter casts and smaller trout, make the little Finesse the ideal rod for this application.  Even a typical 6-7" WV brook trout will put a decent flex in the 1wt, and a larger specimen can give you a great battle.  It's a great setup for dry fly and dry/dropper fishing on small West Virginia mountain streams.

A lot of folks look down on or scoff at bluegill and other panfish as sporting for a fly rod or beneath their abilities, but hooking a slab bluegill on a light rig that can be buckled to the cork might change your mind.  Another little addiction of mine is to feed tiny deer hair bugs to longear sunfish in small streams near my home.  I consider them to be the brook trout of Ohio.  They can have truly stunning coloration and using a light fly fishing rig lets you enjoy their spunk a little more.

Smallmouth bass?  One of the harder fighting fish I have convenient access to in Ohio?  Smallies up to about 16" have been landed in short order using a tippet size that can handle them and the tiny little 1wt rod, so long as the flies chosen can be cast without issue.  Here's some video showing some powerful small stream smallies buckling the UL rod.

Now back to that fear of hooking a carp on the TFO 1wt.  After lots and lots of real-life experiences landing strong fish on the Finesse rig, I finally decided I needed to see if it could be done.  Could a carp be successfully and ethically landed on this setup?  I have hooked three Ohio carp on my 1wt outfit, and have landed 2/3.  The lost fish was the result of a straightened hook that happened within a few feet of the net, otherwise I'd be at 100% landed (in a small sample size, I concede this).  I also filmed one of the carp I hooked, and here you can see the uncut fight footage and that the fish was landed in a little over 1 minute elapsed time.

The largest of my 1wt carp experiences was a happenstance encounter while smallmouth fishing that previously mentioned small stream.  I presented a fly to a pod of carp that was working towards me, got an eat, and had a Herculean fight with that golden bone.  24" of carp power vs a 1wt and 4X tippet, and it ended in a victory snap for me and a healthy fish swimming off (angrily). 

I couldn't have been more wrong about ultralight fly fishing.  Flat-out, dead wrong.  As crazy as it sounds, feeling like you're flirting with losing control and feeling like you're in a fight that you might not win is addictive.  When I hook a carp (even a big one for my area) on my 7wt, the issue of whether or not I can handle the fish is not an issue.  I'll land the fish, it's just a matter of time.  I caught my personal best smallmouth last fall on that same 7wt with 1X tippet and never even put the fish on the reel.  Those are amazing fishing experiences, but I can honestly say that smaller versions of the same species caught on the 1wt outfit were more memorable to me.  A few years back at a fly fishing show in Cincinnati, I told a TFO rep I have practically tried to break this little Finesse rod, and haven't done it.  If you want to get back to pure fly fishing fun, to feeling like you're picking fights you might not win, to casting complete outfits that weigh less than a 4wt reel, give ultralight fly fishing a look.  You might just have your eyes opened to the capabilities of the equipment just like I did, and you'll enjoy the heck out of it.