Fly Casting From Your Kayak

Author: Capt. Greg Bowdish

I had a very fortunate introduction to fly casting. I learned about the sport of fly fishing from two college buddies on Georgia farm ponds and the only type of watercraft we had available was a tiny johnboat with a few broken ribs. It was an awful boat and was appropriately outfitted with a metal pot for an anchor and a plank for a paddle. Because of the broken ribs, the boat was terribly unstable and standing up in it was as easy as standing up on a waterbed. Looking back and realizing that I learned to fly cast from a seated position, I am very thankful for that beat up johnboat. It gave me casting skills early on that some people never take the time to master.

These days, whenever I mention to another yak fly angler that I like to fly fish from my kayak, they usually start asking me questions about wading boots, stingrays, and mud. I have been a bit surprised to learn how many kayak fly anglers rarely, if ever, fly cast from a seated position in their kayaks. The purpose of this article is to share with you wading yak fly fishers some of the wisdom I gleaned from a busted up johnboat on a Georgia farm pond many years ago. With these skills and practice you might relax a bit out there and better enjoy those subtle advantages that a fly rod sometimes has over conventional tackle.

Before I talk about casting, I think there is something that anyone who owns or is thinking about purchasing a kayak or small canoe needs to know – in most cases you will be more stealthy seated in your small paddle craft than you will wading. The reason is simple. A boat drawing only a few inches of water blends into the surface to a fish a few yards away. Two feet sticking down and kicking up bottom dust are hard to miss for that same fish. I was keyed into this fact during one of my first redfishing trips aboard my sit-on-top kayak when a redfish tailed up to the bow of my yak, put his tail down, went under the yak, and then put his tail back up and went on his merry way. I was so amazed I didn’t even bother to cast.

In order to better understand how to fly cast seated in a kayak, it is crucial that you have a better understanding of casting mechanics in general. All the wind knots, lackluster distance and accuracy, and the annoying sound of the fly smacking the water behind you are not the fault of the kayak and are usually signs that there are problems in your everyday casting that could be easily fixed.

So, let’s start with probably the most universal kayak fly casting issue – hitting the water on your back cast.

With your casting arm only a few feet above the surface of the water you don’t have much room to work with, so why be hard on yourself? In order to make a lengthy cast, you have to move the rod a given distance. If you don’t get that rod loaded and begin your casting stroke as soon as possible, you will most likely “run out of room” causing your back cast to end too far behind you and consequently, your line and/or fly to smack the water behind you.

Before you ever begin your cast, make everything easier on yourself by making sure the tip of your fly rod is in or at the surface of the water and move your casting arm a bit farther forward than you normally would. Start your cast slowly and smoothly accelerate as your line begins to leave the water. Now, when you stop the rod on your back cast, it will be much earlier than before and you will be less likely to send your line and fly towards the waters surface.

This may not solve the problem entirely. Another possible culprit could be that your line is not straight before you begin your cast or that you are picking up the line off the water with way too much force causing shock waves in your line as it unrolls off your rod. Either way, the slack that is created from not having a straight line will rob you of precious casting stroke, once again making you have to move your arm farther than you are able in this seated position.

If this is the case, you will most likely find yourself not waiting for your back cast to straighten before you start your forward cast, the logic here being that if you get it all moving before it falls in the water it will somehow work. The opposite happens, however, because by not allowing your cast to straighten, you have just committed yourself to making an even longer casting stroke! Always look for ways to remove slack by having a straight fly line both in the air and on the water. A fly line without slack means a much more effective casting stroke.

Now that you have removed slack and understand the importance of having enough arm room to execute a given cast, let’s look at how you are forming your loops and aiming your cast. Both of these tasks are accomplished by stopping the rod on the end of the forward and back casts. The direction you stop the rod is the direction the line will travel. This is a very critical point and a thorough understanding of the physics involved will allow you to make casts seated in your kayak that you may not have even been able to make standing up before.

Obviously, we can draw the conclusion that if you want to cast a fly to a target than you need to stop the rod tip when it is traveling toward that target, but your ability to get the fly to its mark is also reliant on where you stop the rod on your back cast. Try the following exercise standing on grass: while false casting stop the rod down behind you and down in front of you making the rod tip travel in an arching path. You will notice that the size of your loop increases and the length of your cast decreases. Now, begin to stop your back cast and forward cast higher until they stop in completely opposite directions from one another. Your loops should start looking a little more like Lefty’s and your fly line should begin to tug at your line hand as it straightens in the air. This is the “perfect” casting loop that you have been striving for. But we are not done . . .

Now, begin stopping your back cast higher and higher while maintaining a straight ahead forward cast. You should start seeing your loop begin to close and those nasty “wind” knots beginning to form. Having your rod tip travel in a less than 180 degree rod tip path is one common cause of wind knots.

Do you recall the arching rod tip path you made when you stopped the tip down in front and behind you? After stopping the rod very high on a back cast, make this arching forward cast and look at the resultant loop. It should no longer be closed and unroll in front of you like a “good” cast. There will also not be any wind knots. Freshwater trout fisherman call this cast a “Steeple Cast” and routinely employ it in situations where there is not much room for a back cast. But using this technique can also be very useful in areas where you don’t have much room to move your arm in an efficient casting stroke – like a kayak!

For our “Kayak Cast”, though, we don’t need to send our back cast straight up. Just aim it slightly higher than you typically would and throw a slightly wider loop on the forward cast. This “Kayak Cast” is not a powerful cast, but can be very accurate once mastered and in the kayak will allow you to be much more at ease casting while seated. If you need more distance, you can easily add a double haul, but because distances are not so critical because of the stealth of your watercraft, this cast should prove to be very adequate in most all situations.

One last important thing to keep in mind is to not rely on power to get more distance – it simply doesn’t work. Removing slack, a smooth acceleration to a stop, and using all available arm movement as efficiently as possible is the secret to casting distance while seated in a yak.

Simply going through the process of mastering the different rod tip paths and the resultant loops will do wonders for your fly casting in all situations and is something every fly caster should take time to practice. Fly casting sometimes gets a bit tricky in tight situations where we have limited body movement or casting room, but your ability to make adjustments can really help get the fly to its target.

Capt. Greg Bowdish is an FFF Certified Fly Casting Instructor and full-time fly fishing and kayak guide out of Matlacha, Florida. He has also published many fly fishing articles and photographs in both local and national publications.