10 Tips For Better Line Mending, With Mike Pease

The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast

James Hathaway

Sports, Wilderness, Education, How To

4.8 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2026

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you think mending is just lifting your rod and flipping it upstream—well sometimes it is—but there is so much more you can do with line mends to add slack in just the right places, and to deal with tricky currents. Mike Pease [30:41], Orvis-endorsed guide and great storyteller, gives us 10 tips for increasing the utility of your line mends. I learned a bunch of new tricks on this podcast and I am sure you will as well.

There are some helpful tips from listeners and some questions that may answer things you have been curious about, including:
When would you use a drop shot nymphing rig?
Have you ever used a dry fly, nymph, and wet fly at the same time?
I am debating about which Helios rod to buy. Should I get the 9 foot 5 weight or the 9-foot 5-inch version? Can I use the longer rod for wade fishing?
A listener gives his version of a Euro rig for steelhead.
Which 10-foot rod should I get for Lake Erie steelhead?
Do you think tying a dropper to the bend of a hook is any hindrance to fish taking the upper fly?
Sometimes when I hook a big fish it takes line right away and my tippet breaks. Do you think my drag is set too tight? How tight should I set my drag?
A great tip from a listener on an easy way to remove split shot with a tool everyone carries.
You say that trout can always see the tippet. If so, why would I ever want to use something as fine as 6X?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi and welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing podcast.
0:17.0	This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer.
0:18.8	And my guest this week is Mike P's.
0:21.8	Mike is an Orvis and Dorse guide from Northern California.
0:26.6	And Mike has some secrets to share with us.
0:29.4	Mike has 10 secrets about mending line.
0:33.9	And you may think that mending line is just lifting up the rod and flipping the line upstream or
0:38.7	downstream, but there can be a lot more to it. And in Mike's opinion, being able to mend is
0:46.6	properly is one of the most important parts of presenting a fly to a trout. So again, if you thought you were pretty hot at mending,
0:58.4	listen to this podcast because I think you're going to learn some stuff. I certainly did.
1:04.7	And before we do the flybox, just a couple announcements. One is that there was an old phone number
1:10.7	that I used to use for calling
1:13.3	in questions and um it's it's become i think it's become a little bit a little bit corrupted or
1:19.9	maybe there's there's spam involved in it so if you're using that old 802 number to call in
1:26.5	questions don't do it anymore.
1:28.4	Don't use that.
1:29.1	Just attach a voice file to your email.
1:34.1	That's a much better and cleaner way of doing it
1:36.7	and actually gets us better audio quality for your questions.
1:41.8	And I wanted to tell you about some Orvis and Dorsd operations in case you're
1:48.2	interested in planning a fishing trip this year, whether it's around the corner or around the
1:55.7	world. First Orvis and Dors operation is the famous fishheads of the San Juan.
	...

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