You can spend any amount of money you’d like to on a toilet — anywhere from $100 to several thousand dollars, apparently. All of them serve one essential function, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, even the expensive ones can’t save you from making a real mess of things.
As it turns out, fly lines are very similar to toilets. In the world of trout fishing, you have perfectly serviceable fly lines coming in from respected manufacturers at $30, and the flagship “technical” lines can come in at over $130. And, at the end of the day, if you are throwing tailing loops every cast, spending tons of money on a new fly line will not turn you into Lefty Kreh.
It’s also somewhat difficult to objectively quantify the performance of both of these things beyond the factory specifications. Sure, longer tapers are said to be more conducive to delicate dry fly presentations, but I guarantee you if you pulled ten random anglers off Name Your River and did a blind test, with real-world weather conditions and fishing distances, you likely wouldn’t have a consensus on which taper and line performs the best.
That’s not to say you don’t get what you pay for; the coatings, textures, and other properties of flagship lines are all very nice indeed. Those who enjoy the psychological edge of using the best tools available, or those with very specialized needs, will still shell out for those expensive lines — the Snap-On tools of the fly line world.
So, when reviewing fly lines, I try to keep the above principles in mind lest I get too far out over my skis. You can compare numbers on websites until the cows come home, but the real question, and the only one that matters, will always be: how well do they perform in an actual fishing scenario?
Much like Snap-On tools, whether these things are worth the premium is a personal question. For the kind of fishing I do on small creeks, the ultra-premium fly lines are not.
Enter the Cortland 444 Peach.
Fishing the 3-Weight
I’m not going to get into a history lesson here, but the Cortland 444 Peach has been around a long time — over 50 years, in fact. If memory serves, the complany changed hands a while back, and now it sure looks like Cortland Line Company has never been doing better. After hearing about how incredible the 444 Peach, specifically, is for several years, I resolved to give it a shot on my next big expedition.
I took my favorite 7’6” 3-weight up to the Greater Yellowstone area for a little bit of mid-April spring creek fishing. The Mother’s Day caddis and baetis were out two or three weeks ahead of schedule, providing the perfect opportunity to put this double-taper 444 Peach through its paces in a variety of casting and line management situations on waters a variety of sizes.
In short, I can say that a Cortland 444 Peach on a short, lightweight setup is just about as pleasant of a fishing experience as is possible to experience on a small, meandering brook trout creek.
In these situations, you’ll likely have to employ a variety of casting techniques to get your dry fly where it needs to go, without getting hung up on backside willows; steeple casts, pile casts, and roll casts are all on the menu. I’ve tried overlining my rod to aid casting at these short engagement distances with mixed results, but there’s no need with the Peach; true to weight and with the full belly of a double -taper line, it was an absolute joy to cast and strip in a boatload of beautiful brookies.
On some bigger water near the Henry’s Fork, I also brought out the 3-weight, and was able to do some more traditional flycasting. As advertised, the 444 is supple and smooth as the day is long, and mends well. Longer casts are still a breeze, even on a windy day with the small 3-weight.
Final Thoughts on the Cortland 444 Peach
Double-tapers used to be the standard floating line for decades, before the marketing hype and increased shooting distances of all of the whiz-bang weight-forward stuff took over the market. Again, product specifications don’t always translate 1:1 into real-world fishing scenarios, and on any trout stream I’ve ever been to I can’t remember one time where the ability to shoot your line out to your backing would have been useful for the act of catching fish.
I have to say that I am drawn to the old-school vibe of the double-tapers, although in almost all of the fishing that I do, I’ll admit there’s essentially no difference between the two types of floating lines. If you just gotta have a weight-forward (and there’s nothing wrong with that), the 444 Peach also comes in that configuration as well.
Finally, I generally don’t care much about gear, as long as it technically works, I’d would rather spend money on gas than a new whatever that claims to make me more successful in the field. I will also say, though, that the tactile nature of a well-made product can be extremely satisfying, and I really enjoyed the experience of this careful style of fishing with such a beautiful fly line. And, hey, it’s also not the most expensive line you can buy either.
Perhaps the best compliment I can then pay this fly line is this — I need to replace the line on my 5-weight, cracked from age… it, too, will be getting a Cortland 444 Peach.
