That depends on the types of rope you have on your fly system. There are lots of different kinds of rope and kinds of strands, materials, colors
etc. If its rough it could be a hemp type rope (brown in color) hemp is extreamly strong and very durrable but can be a little ridged. I love hemp ropes, but when they get old if you are not wearing gloves and moving flys around you will get little splinters in your hands. If the ropes in your fly system are starting to fray or crack they should be replaced with new ones. You might want to concider a cotton polyfiber rope, they have different types of inner cores but the nice thing about a softer rope is that if for some reason you must move a fly line without gloves you wont get splinters.