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I am lucky in that I often find myself having the opportunity of fishing my #8 weight fly outfits to either in east coat estuary waters or inland native species waters.

Along the coast and in estuaries I target bream, flathead, whiting, tarpon and small pelagics on my #8 weight outfits.

Inland I get to target bass, saratoga and perch on #8 weight gear.

Fly Rods

You can get away with fly rod from #6 through to #9 weight and in lengths up to 9 feet. I have settle on Redington Predator series #8 weight 7 foot 10 inch fly rod as my rod of choice for this type fishing. Whilst this is one of the Sage brands these rods are relatively inexpensive and the last one I purchased was just US$249. They are available widely in America and because they are so good I have progressively purchased 2 #10 weight, two #8 weight and one #6 from this series of fly rods. All five were purchased with a minimum of fuss from Avidmax.

Whilst all relatively short these fly rods all a powerful butt section but a tip that has enough give to load easily with relatively short casts and is soft enough to add a cushioning effect when fighting stoic fish. The reason for leaning toward a shorter rod is that firstly they are easier to handle in a boat, being short they make it easier to fish into structure such as overhanging trees and finally because its easier to keep your line below the wind with a short rod.

Reels

For this style of fly fishing the reel is not a big issue as long as it is in balance with your chosen fly rod, has a drag that will exert a couple of pounds of drag pressure or has a spool rim that you can easily palm to apply a little pressure on a fish. It is unlikely that any of these fish will take you to the backing but a minimum of 50 meters may add to your confidence if you have a bigger fish on. One of the main purposes for backing in these types of fishing situations is to fill out the reel making sure that you line is properly loaded toward the outside of the spool and not deep down in the much smaller diameter hub area of the reel and consequently developing a lot of very tight 'line memory'.

For this type of fishing, for a long time now, I have been using 2 Feathercraft 9/10 saltwater cartridge fly reels. Each reel came with 3 interchangeable cartridges which I have loaded with a quite comprehensive range of fly fly lines. Amongst those lines I have intermediate, floating, fast sink lines and T14 shooting head lines each with ample dacron backing loaded up on individual cartridge spools and each cartridge spool can easily be fitted to either of the two reels. In each case the lines sit about 4mm below the outside of the rim of the spools that have a cartridge diameter of 95mm so line memory is minimised. The drag systems on these reels are very simple but do exert 7 or 8 pounds of drag pressure which is plenty. In the past they were also used as my saltwater fly reels and they were fine for that even though I always worried about the drag. I now only use them as described here. The reels and cartridges set me back a total of only US$350. Feathercraft, as I understand it, developed these reels and subsequently sold the design to Diawa which company currently sells them as New Era Fly Reels.

Plenty of other reels will do the job for this type of fishing but in any case it will be useful to have at least 3 lines spooled up on extra cartridges or spare spools so the you can quickly swap over between at least floating, intermediate and Type V fast sink line types.

Fly lines

My #8 weight fly fishing encompasses two very different environments.

On the one had there is fishing in temperate fisheries mainly in NSW where I target flathead and bass etc in using temperate water lines lines.

On the other hand I have a selection of warm to hot water lines that I use when targeting fish like saratoga, mangrove jack and other Queensland species and exotic species such as bonefish, permit and trigger fish in exotic locations like Christmas Island and Aitutaki.

These are the fly lines that I believe are best suited to both these situations.

Leaders

This is the leader set up I use for #8, weight outfits when I am fishing the estuaries for bream, flathead and the like and also when I am fishing for Australian native species such as bass, saratoga or the various perch.

It works for me for both still and flowing water and I am comfortable using it from a boat or from the bank and I use it to present both wet flies, dry flies and everything in between.

Fly selection

I strongly believe that flies catch more fly fishers than fish and consequently I work hard to ensure that I limit my fly selection to only those flies I have absolute confidence in.

My #8 weigh fly fishing covers two very different types of fisheries and consequently I have a separate fly box for each.
My #8 weight fly box - bass, perch & saratoga
My #8 weight fly box - east coast estuary & coastal waters

For each of these two fly boxes the flies selected have earned their place by being what I regard the best flies for that specific. I should note that when fishing in either of the above fisheries I generally have the fly box for he other fishery as there are flies in each box that comfortably cross over into the other #8 weight fishery.

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