Rio Products Update for 2013
Chris Daughters, Caddis Fly Shop
Each year, come fall, I meet with a flurry of Fly Industry Sales Reps, listen to their pitches, and make decisions about how many of thousands of fly fishing products to order for the Shop, and when to have them delivered. Times have changed. When I was a wee lad, we had but a half-dozen fly lines on the shelf. Not so today. After looking through the Rio Dealer workbook, I counted something over a hundred different varieties of lines, leaders, tippets, sink-tips and so on. That’s a lot of choices facing me, as a fly shop owner, and the customer, who is trying to figure out what to wind on his or her fly reel.
Confusion factor aside, I wanted to share my thoughts on a few of the RIO products that caught my attention, old and new, as both a Retailer and a fly angler. This is not full review of Rio Products, jus a few impressions I wanted to share. You may find some of these lines, leaders, or tippets of interest. Brace yourselves: Rio has introduced all NEW boxes and packaging for 2013. Expect to see some differences between 2012 and 2013 boxes and bags until the existing inventory is gone.
Overall, Rio has executed an amazing feat of combining across-the-board branding coupled with product evolution and new line and leader introductions. Rio has made already great floating lines float higher and shoot slicker, added loops to both ends of many lines, introuduced specialty tapers that really ARE different, spiced up the Spey game with new lines and T-17 MOW tips, added some cool Saltwater Specialty fly lines and leaders, and offered the lake trout fishing specialist an all-you-can-eat menu of the slowest to the fastest sinking trout lines we have ever seen.
Downsides? Re-working our internet catalog has been – for the time – dominated by Rio’s 2013 Dealer Work-book. One complaint. The naming of the AFS Spey Outound line is unfortunate, because this line is COMPLETELY different from the other Outbound lines, and if you read on, you will find out how so. Common fellas, how about consulting with us more before you hang a confusing name on a great fly line?
Here are a few of the highlights I gleaned after a MONTH of sweating over the new Rio Line, Leader, and Tippet offerings.
iFlight Skagit Shooting Head: New Spey Line. The Skagit iFlight has an intermediate leading 8 ft of the Skagit Head, and this can accomplish two things, (1) achieving deeper swing when using heavy MOW Tips; and (2) achieving just-subsurface presentations when fished with Intermediate tips in complex currents.
Scandi Short Shooting Head Lines: New Product – designed to fish dry or damp flies on shorter Spey rods ,using tapered or Versileaders.
Switch Spey full Fly Line: Under recognized fly line. This is a full fly line that can be fished with Spey style or overhead style on sub-12 ft rods. Not the line of choice for heavy sink tips but great for tapered leaders, and modest Rio Versileaders. Capable of Indicator fishing in a pinch.
Spey Versitip Kits: Rio offers both the Skagit Flight and the Scandi Short Spey Heads in Versitip Kits, allowing an angler easy means to carry and fish the most effective range of floating and sink tip options in a Rio tip wallet at a cost savings.
