"Ethan" wrote in message
oups.com...
Since I'm a relative newbie, allow me to fullfill my duty as relative
newbie and ask a dumb question.

We've had some dumb questions over the years, this isn't one of them.

Recently I was fishing a warm water stream for smallmouth and I was
using a little split shot about 8" up from the fly on the tippet, and I
found after a while, I got a nasty tangle in my tippet around the split
shot. It was like a wind knot but worse? How does everyone avoid nasty
wind knots when using split shot? Or is it just a fact of life, and the
reason we carry extra spools of tippet?

You probably need to adjust your casting stroke, probably slowing down a
little and even expanding your backcast to let your rod load fully before
beginning the forward stroke. If you're doing any false casting your chances
of this happening are greater too. When fishing with weight, especially with
a softer action rod, the operative words are slower and smoother. I was
taught to not even try a typical cast when I was starting out and using
weight, more of a "swing" but it kept me from false casting too much and
getting some significant bird's nest in my leader. Pick up your fly at the
end of the drift, backcast once and place your fly on the next cast, even if
you have to do this a few times to get to your target.