Anyone use a shooting head for freshwater fishing?
I've been reading up on the Rio Outbound line and it seems like it would be nice to have a spool of it for an 8wt or 10wt.

I wonder how well it would work with a standard 9' rod and bass flies or on windy days and why people dont use them more often.

I understand the drawback being that you to strip most of your line back in before you can cast again and that you sacrfice the ability to roll cast, but in bass fishing, I would think a shooting head would allow you to cover more water.

I've used the Orvis depth charge and the Teeny TS lines for stripers on Texoma on an 8 and 9 wt. They're very helpful. Yes, you're stripping in almost back to the boat, and I don't think I'd try to roll cast 'em, but they're really not hard to cast (I don't cast them well, but people who do can achieve extraordinary distances with them) and I don't think you sacrifice that much feel in terms of hook-ups with them.

I am a fan of the Teeny lines for a lot of reasons - I have a mini-tip line I use on my 6-wt to fish up to about 10' deep, and the TS-350 to get down to maybe 25 - 30' (it's a 30' integrated shooting head). His customer service is top-notch and I like the quality and castability of his lines quite a bit. The mini-tip line is the bomb when fishing sub-surface from a tube. Very, very castable & manageable.

There are lot of good points about shooting heads as well as some trade-offs. It would be worth your while to do plenty of online research, gather up all the data you can before jumping in. Not to put you off, just to ensure that you know where you are headed.

Yes, it's pretty much a requirement to "rollcast" the head to the surface before starting the next cast. Thirty or forty feet of high density line underwater won't just pop up for the next cast. And its a lot more of a "chuck and duck" one bast cast and fire! no multiple false casts with a freight train of lead whistling past your noggin!

FlySouth. I have used 11 wt Rio shooting heads, shortened to 28 ft on my Sage 9 & 10 Sage RPLX's for many years for striped bass on Lake Texoma.
I keep mine in a wallet for floater, intermediate,class III, class VI amd LC13.
They are easy to cast and not necessary to roll cast unless desired.
Best to fish them all the way to the boat,"flip" cast with open loop to get head beyond tip and ler 'er rip. 100 ft cast easy with LC.
Rio's T series sinking heads are becoming popular but LC13 for about half the price works for me and I have a bunch on hand.

Works for any species, just match the head to rod and species as any other line.
Many options for running lines.
I don't understand why an integrated head has advantage over "looped" heads w/ running line.

Try 'em - you'll like 'em.