I was going to trash the running line portion, and save the head for a shooting head setup. I may still do that, but.........
I really like the line, so I thought I'd try and repair it. I cut the damaged section(approx 2')out, and took a piece of 35lb braided mono to join the line back together again. Slowly inched the fly line inside the braid, until both ends met in the middle. Placed a nail knot on the two ends of braided mono. Coated the ends and the middle junction with UV Wader Patch.
While I had all the stuff out, I put loops on the end of a extra shooting head I had.
Now to see if the repair would cast ok. The repair is approximately at the 50' mark(20' back from the 30' sinking head) in the line, so it would not be close to the tip top during the cast and shoot. It would be shot out on every cast though. I happened to have a 8wt leaning on my desk, so I went outside and gave it a whirl. First off, it casts fine. No noticeable loss in distance. It does make noise as it goes through the guides, but it's something I'm used to because I use shooting heads quite a bit. The one problem I can see happening, is durability of the UV coating on the knots. I used UV Wader Patch because it's flexible. The UV Knot Sense tends to crack over time. If it cracks and peels off from use, it could cause an issue going through the guides. There are a couple other stronger products to use, but I didn't have it handy today. If the repair goes south, I can always re-do it, or just go back to plan A and make a shooting head out of it. BTW, these custom cut Rio lines are very nice. Hard to go back to a true shooting head system after using these for a couple seasons.
briansII
