Playing around this morning with TFO 5wt Professional model fly rod, with a 5wt fly line that poorly loaded with short casts, so took the clippers to it.

Lopped of 7ft of forward taper up-lining 5wt 140gr to 6wt 160gr fly line.
Weighed 30ft forward taper on ammo scale at exactly 140 gr and cut off and weighed segments until 167gr � close enough�.

Loads fast for short casts and shoots 50-60 feet of line easily.

So you were doing some slicing and splicing it sounds. I took an eight weight line and cut the middle out of the forward section. made a nice shooter for my six weights. Don't know if we are on the same page or not.

Same page definitely ...
As you well know, there's an lot of versitility in splicing and mixin' and matchin - fun stuff and ultimate recycling ...

There surely is! With a scale and some good splicing technique one could have a blast.

I didn't know you could do that...

yessir. For example, a five weight rod requires (very approximately) 130 grains of weight to load up. So a five weight line would be made so that the first thirty feet or so weigh around 130 grains. Thirty feet out of the tiptop, loads up nice. Ten feet, not so much. Sixty or seventy feet, whoa Nelly!

So one get a heavier weight line, six or seven and does surgery as described and gets a line that weighs 130 grains with ten or fifteen (or however much is desired/Frankensteined) line outside the tiptop. No need to get a ton of line in the air and false casting. just pick it up and fire away!

This is an extremely thumbnailed outline but that is the basic of what its all about.

When doing surgery like this on a fly line how does it effect the turnover properties? With bass or bluegill it wouldn't really matter but with picky trout requiring delicate presentations? Not criticizing just trying to learn...

Modification of a "standard" WF flyline by shortening the front taper results in a "bass taper" configuration.
IMO, there is no effect on turnover "properties".
I'm not a trout fisherman so perhaps others more qualified will address "delicate presentation"...

A net or seine is the most efficent method of catching bait, presentation doesnt matter as long as your accurate. stripers will hit a larger trout freelined in deeper water than largemouth although generally any trout found in Texas is excellent bait for both

I'm not responding to this.

George, I can only assume you're using loop to loop connections to do your line splicing experiments. Are you using braided loops? If not, would you mind describing what you're doing?

Thanks.

TxRed, a number of years ago, Dan Blanton of West Coast fame showed me the technique of utilizing braided mono for splicing fly lines, and more importantly making braided loops for line/leader connections, I haven� done it any other way since.

I prefer Gudebrod �Butt Leader� braided mono in 35# and 50# exclusively because it has a tighter braid than Cortland, size dependant upon on fly line.

Many use a 10# or smaller mono nail knot to secure braided loops to line, but I serve mine with nylon fly tyin� thread coated with Goop or Pliobond.
Do not glue or attach loop or splice other than end of mono braid, because it will negate the �Chinese finger puzzle� effect.

If I am making a permanent fly line splice I do not use loops, but �splice� with short piece of braid with joined fly line parts; serve and coat each end of braid with Goop or Pliobond.
If I intend to switch from floating to sinker line, I will use loops.

Hope this helps.
Dan explains it better than I can.

http://www.danblanton.com/gettinglooped.html
http://www.danblanton.com/mix_match_tips.html

A guide I fished with saw Lefty Kreh using a TFO rod. As you may know Lefty uses a coding system on all of his lines - uses a black marker to make a wide band for 5 and thinner band for 1. So you can see visually what weight line he is using with what rod. At any rate, Lefty over-lines his rods by one, which is much the same effect you get from lopping off the front taper. If you read his books, that is a suggestion that he makes a lot.

What a difference! I took my TFO NXT 5/6 outfit to the river for a few hours this morning. I cast for around an hour and only caught a few small ones which gave me plenty of time to think about my casting, rod loading and line length. I started trimming the end of my fly line off around 6" at a time. I wound up taking 24" total off and it made a world of difference in the feeling and the length of my casts. Probably added around 20' easily but the real story is how much better I can feel the rod load and how much less energy it takes to make a cast. Much happier now.

that sounds like a quite productive trip!