Saltwater – tropical | fishonfly.com.au

{{+1}}Saltwater – tropical{{-1}}

Detailed below are the flies I used on my last Tropical Fly Fishing Trip. Whilst that trip was to Melville Island off Darwin the selection is relevant to most Australian tropical destinations and is a good starting point for one of those exotic tropical fly fishing destinations. For normal salt water use I always tie on Stainless Steel hooks so that the fly can be rinsed and put back in my fly box. Because there is the potential to loose a lot of flies when fishing up north you may want to consider cutting costs by substituting coated hooks rather than Stainless steel and bead chain eyes rather than the much more expensive dumbbell eyes and real eyes. Also think about "form & function" and restrict the list of flies that you take to a selection that covers the range of fishing situations that you expect to encounter and carry multiples of each fly rather than a having more than one fly with the same form and function. A good tip is to carry some split shot. If the fish are fishing too deep just adding a split shot can get the fly down that extra meter or so and that may make all the difference. Also tie some of your flies with weed guards. They don't cut down the hook up rate and you will find that they save a lot of snags when fishing shallow drains and around mangroves. In any case you can cut weed guards off if necessary but gee they are hard to add in the field. I like to carry two rigged rods. My preferred outfit is a #9 weight rod rigged with a Rio Intermediate sink tarpon taper line. I use this for 80% of my tropical fishing. I also carry T14 fast sinking shooting heads backed with 50lb slick shooter running line, and a floating line amongst my spare lines. I nail knot 1 meter of 50lb of good quality mono off the end of my fly lines as a leader and finish that with a loop knot. I like my tippet to be connected to that with a loop knot and to be the weakest link in my rig so I restrict that to a maximum of 40 lb straight mono or fluorocarbon. That can be fished straight through to the fly or you can add a lighter tippet or heavier shock/abrasion tippet. Oh and if I was only taking 2 flies they would be size 2/0 pink things and size 2/0 chartreuse/white clousers - these two flies will cover probably 80% of your tropical fly fishing.

If it was a serious trip that I had planned and saved for I would take the following flies as well as my estuary fly box for flats fishing, my bass box for anywhere there are lilies and my offshore fly box for any pelagic fishing.