Sweet smiles of success – Kelly McNinch & Kit.

You hear a lot about sweet spots in sports jargon these days. Mostly around bats, racquets, clubs, etc. It’s all about making precise contact between the ball and the sweep spot on the particular implement being swung. It could be a club, bat, racquet … even a foot or a hand. But you don’t hear too much about sweet spots on fly rods. We’re not trying to make contact with another object, at least not deliberately. The only part of a fly rod that might be close to a sweet spot would be the tip since that’s where all the energy is ultimately transferred to the fly line. But the tip and all of its power is directly related to the competency of the caster and the quality of the rod. On the other hand, I think that there is a sweet spot on one piece of fly fishing equipment – the line. Every line, and there are thousands out there, will have its own sweet spots for a particular cast. There are a lot of sweet spots out there, even if you only have one line. That elusive spot can change with the kind of cast, the wind, the caster and the rod. Complicated? Yeah! Fun? Yeah!

Jim McNinch found the sweet spot…

And there’s another kind of sweet spot in fly fishing. It’s the one on your favorite river, lake or pond. The place where you know you’ll always get a grab … well, at least most of the time. But those kind of sweet spots change too as they get ‘discovered’ by others (we never tell, right?) or physical changes take place. So as fly fishers, we all spend time looking for ‘sweet spots.’ Some are easy to find, some are more difficult, some will be eternally elusive. So try thinking of Trinity County as a sweet spot that’s easy to find, that doesn’t change and has plenty of room. That way, on your next visit, when you drive over Buckhorn, you’ll have already found your first one. Now you can spend the rest of your time looking for a new sweet spot on the waters, and old one on your line; ya’ never know, you might get lucky and score a ‘triple’!! Happy Hunting. See ya’ on the water. Joe Neil

Joe Neil has been our close friend & affiliated with the Trinity Fly Shop for over 15 years. Joe and his wife Susan reside along the banks of the Trinity River and when not chasing steelheed, they can be found stretching for stripers and shad and searching out other ‘sweet spots’.