Assembling Your Tackle
by Dave Whitlock

Getting off on the right foot in fly fishing begins with obtaining a well-balanced tackle system and knowing how to assemble it. Putting all the components together can be confusing, bewildering, and down right discouraging without some help or good advice. The best place to get assistance is at the shop where you purchased the equipment. Fly-fishing friends or local fly-fishing clubs are also usually willing to show you how they do it. If you have to go it alone, here is a guide to procedures that will allow you to make the most of preparing, using, and storing your fly tackle

Fly Tackle Components

Fly tackle consists of seven components-rod, reel, backing, fly line, leader, tippet material, and flies. Seldom do these come totally assembled and ready to fish. Usually each item comes in a separate package, so the procedures of attaching the backing to the reel, fly line to backing, leader to fly line, tippet to leader, and fly to tippet must be done before casting and fishing with the tackle. Assembly requires learning and using a few knots.
Before you begin assembly, pick a well-lighted area with a chair and table. Have on hand a pair of small scissors, fingernail clippers, a small pair of needle-nose pliers, a pencil, a few small screw drivers, a size 8 needle, a small strawlike tube or large needle, and a bottle of flexible nail polish or fly head cement.
First, you must decide which hand you will use to reel in the line. Fly-fishing tradition has usually dictated cranking the reel with the hand used to do the casting. However, this requires switching the fly rod from the left hand to the right or from the right hand to the left. Using one hand to cast and fight a fish and the other hand to operate the reel has more advantages than the traditional switching-hands method. I believe it is almost always better to crank the reel with your free hand (the left hand for right-handed casters and the right hand for left-handed casters).
Consult the reel instructions to see if your model is reversible. Most reels, because of tradition, come set up to retrieve with the right hand. The reel's line guard and the drag system will be set accordingly. If conversion is possible, the manufacturer will supply conversion instructions with the reel, along with operating instructions. A small screwdriver is usually the only tool you will need for the conversion.
When the reel is set up for the hand you choose, attach the reel to the reel seat on the rod's butt section. Make sure the reel is hanging below the rod and the reel handle is on the correct side for the hand you have decided to use to crank the reel. The reel's line guard should face forward.