Dry fly floatant is a combination of a wax and carrier in a liquid state. It is intended to keep your dry flies from absorbing water, to keep the fly floating. Floatant normally has a waxy substance that coats the dry fly and a lighter liquid that acts as a carrier for the waxy substance that evaporates. The lighter liquid serves the same purpose that paint thinner does in house paint. Paint thinner is a carrier for oil and pigment for your house paint. Just like paint thinner, the liquid substance in floatant quickly evaporates leaving only the waxy substance behind. The purpose of dry fly floatant when fly fishing is to keep your dry fly floating on the surface of the water. Dry flies are intended to simulate insects that sit on top of the surface tension of a body of water. If the fly is sinking, even a little bit, it will not look realistic. Fish have incredibly good eyesight and can spot an unnatural fly right away. If the dry fly is not floating on top of the surface tension of the water, the fish will not bite. Get the fly floating properly, and you can catch fish all day long.
Note: if the end of your fly line is slightly sinking you can add floatant to your fly line and leader for extra buoyancy.
The other conciderations when fly fishing are strike indicators, these come in many forms but all serve the same purpose and that is to visually indicate when the fish takes your fly.
Two other conciderations when fly fishing is weight and sinkent. Weight can be added to the fly line or leader in the form of tungsten putty or lead split shot, you need the extra weight when fly fishing fast currents to get your fly down deep and fast.
Different fly lines are used for fly fishing different depths of the water. The floating fly line floats on the surface while sinking fly lines sink at different sink rates and sink tip fly lines float on the surface but the tip sinks.
All these different fly lines have different functions and some times eliminates the need for sinkent and weight, but not always.
To see our selection of fly line go to the fly line catagorie. In the fly line catagorie you will see,
Floating fly line
Full sink fly line
Intermediate fly line
Sink tip fly line
Cold water fly lines and Tropical fly line.
I hope this helps you enjoy your fly fishing
