Jay Fair’s “TOP LINE”

Jay Fair began trolling his flies using a sink-tip floating fly line on a fly rod and reel. When guiding clients he found that a 9’ rod with a left hand single action was not the set up for most anglers. Jay converted to a level wind reel mounted on a custom rod built on a fly rod blank. The bulk of a sink-tip fly line would not fit a modest freshwater trolling reel. To balance the system Jay built a line made of 50yds fly line backing, 90 ft of level floating fly line .031” half a color 18# lead-core, followed by 8# mono leader ranging from 20’ to as much as 40’. I have modified Jay’s formula. By using the more advanced thinner braid as backing the length is doubled to 100 yds. I purchased a custom production run of .029” floating line 100 ft long from JIM TEENY Fly Lines. The half color of lead-core remains unchanged. I changed the leader system to 20’ of 10#, a #14 Mini Swivel, and 5 ft of 8# mono. The 8# tip leader is disposable. As the leader shortens it can be replaced with any length tippet. The swivel provides a hardware ring to tie to, rather than needing a line to line knot. The line as sold, ends with a Fast Snap for quick change of flies without re-tying a knot.