There is much to love about fly fishing: The beauty of a good cast on a mountain stream or into a cauldron of churning False Albacore/Stripers/ Spanish Mackerel/name your fish. The feel of a really good cast as the line shoots out and we know, without even looking, that this is a superb cast. The dazzling appearance of brookies, brown trout, Spanish, speckled trout even the ever-humble blue gill. The strange, mysterious complexity or utter simplicity of so many flies. Not to mention the addictive character of our attraction to the alure of this form of angling.
But flyfishing can be a maddening sport.. It refuses to let us get by with less than our best. Yet, in fact, it gives us numerous evidences that we have done something wrong. We can look at and listen to our casts and tell that we have screwed up. And that’s a very good thing. All we really have to do is Stop, Look and Listento what our casting is telling us about how to do it well. So, what does our equipment tell us about our casting?
A Snap on the Forward Cast
Do you hear a Snapon your cast? That means you have mistaken a fly rod for a bullwhip and have begun your forward cast too quickly. You haven’t let the backcast unroll enough and are exerting too much power too early. It’s that simple. And you can hear it Snap/
Ripples in the Line After the Cast
Do you see ripples in your line when it hits the water? Could they be shock waves from trying too hard to power the cast instead of simply letting the rod and the line work for you? Perhaps you are trying to make the cast happen instead of letting it happen with what Lefty Kreh called a hurry up and stop, even to the point of cheating on your stop by letting the rod tip drift forwards or backwards instead of stopping.
Spray and Noise on the Beginning of the Backcast
When you are making the initial part of your backcast, do you see a long line of spray and disturbed water along with hearing a pronounced ssshshssshss? Oh, my goodness. You have begun the “power” part of your backcast too quickly. The idea is to move you rod tip (from being very close to the water, of course) upward slowly until the fly line (just the fly line, not the leader, tippet and fly) is off the water. By starting the power portion of your backcast too quickly, you have scared every fish within 1,000 miles. Slow down on your backcast. Start with you rod tip as close to the water’s surface as you can get it (it can even be in the water). Slowly but firmly, raise the rod tip until the fly line comes out of the water and go into your “hurry up and stop” along with completing your haul. Not only are you trying to get the life and fly off the water, you are trying to load your rod so it can make a decent backcast. You will be amazed what a difference this makes. It’s easier, too. Instead of having a Power Cast that lasts for 6’ (Lefty Kreh is rolling over in his grave at the very mention of “power” in relation to fly casting) the “Hurry Up and Stop” only covers about 6” to 1’. It comes when the rod is around 11:30 or 12:00 and lasts to about 12:30 or 1:00, max. That’s all. Until then, you have a slow acceleration of your rod to get the fly line off of and out of the water. As soon as that happens, your rod tip should be almost vertical (11:30-12:00, again) and ready for the remainder of the backcast- the hurry up and stop. The hurry up and stop finishes loading the rod so it can make a superior backcast when you stop the rod tip firmly.
A Pool of Coiled Line on the Water Prior to the Backcast
If you read the paragraph above, you may remember that you begin your backcast with the rod tip close to or even just touching or maybe even in the water. Why is that important? Try this. Prior to your backcast, hold your rod so it is parallel to the water’s surface and wait a few seconds. What happens? Your weighted fly line wants to drop straight from the tip of the rod into the water. Since you a holding the line between the reel and the line guides, the easiest line to help it drop straight down is the line already on the water. So, the line hanging from the rod tip into the water draws more and more fly line forward so a sufficient amount does hang straight down from the rod tip. You can watch it move forward in just a few seconds. All of that line is slack that must be straightened out to get the fly to start moving for the fly cast. You start your backcast and you have the rod past 1:00 (maybe back to 2:00 or almost 3:00 before you get the fly off the water. And you still haven’t done your hurry up and stop! When you finish it, the rod is basically pointing at the water behind you and piling up there. To get it moving, you have to get all of that slack moving so you exert all the force (power) you can, the rod tip goes in a high arc to lift the fly line behind you off the water and your loop is 15’ wide instead of 3-4”. The cast falls way short. The line piles up just beyond your rod tip. All because you didn’t believe it important to keep your rod tip down near the water. All you have to do is see the results. Trying the same thing every time and praying for a different outcome is fruitless. So, you suddenly develop a sore shoulder and you give up. Shame, shame. Look and learn from the clues the rod, line and fly give you that you aren’t doing it properly.
A Huge Open Loop on the Forward Cast
How many times have you made your forward cast and seen a large, very open loop in your fly line? Oh my. Your equipment is telling you several things. First of all, it is likely you started your backcast too slowly and had you rod tip well past midnight (straight up) before the fly line got off the water (see above). This could mean that: A. You didn’t get the slack out of your fly line and had too much slack in your line when you began your backcast; B. You bent your wrist on the backcast, causing the rod tip to point downward (since the fly goes where the rod tip points when it stops, you cast to the water behind you and are trying to recover with a long, looping cast), and C. you didn’t start with your rod tip low enough to bring the back cast 180º from when you want the fly to land. D. Your backcast is far too powerful too early. Slow it down and take it easy.
You Hear a Womp on Your Forward Cast
This is a sound you don’t want to hear. It means you fly has crashed into your rod on the forward cast. The basic problem is that you have not bent your wrist ever so slightly at the end the forward cast and your fly has hit your rod. This is not good since it means that sooner or later, that portion of your rod will break most likely. The end of the forward cast is the only time you really want to bend your wrist, ever so slightly to “tuck” the rod tip under the fly line and the fly as they go forward.
Hear a Whoosh on Your Forward Cast
What does it mean if you hear a Whoosh during your cast? Basically, it means you are trying entirely too hard. Your fly rod and line are speeding through the air and you get that Whoosh. You don’t want to hear that sound. The point of successful fly casting is letting the rod and the line do about 95% of the work. Our job is to let it happen instead of trying to make it happen. The Whoosh tells us we are trying too hard to make it work!
Another Reason for Waves in the Line and the Line in a Big Puddle
At some point, you are going to figure this out for yourself. The first clue is that nothing feels right. It is hard to get you backcast going, even when you wait until the fly line (not the leader, tippet or fly, remember) is out of the water. But it just feels too heavy for your rod so you add some power (horrors). The back cast feels like it is collapsing, so you add power again. The result is a wide open loop with the fly line piling up in a heap about 10 feet from the tip of your rod. But you tried to do everything properly.
The most likely cause is that you had too much line in the air during your backcast and forward cast. In other words, you overpowered your rod.
Rods are designed to handle a certain amount of weight out the tip of the rod. Too little and you overpower your cast and you get shockwaves in your line and you cast is not very long. But you can overpower the rod, too. You make it try to cast more weight than it can handle. The rod is supposed to bend as you make your cast and unbend when you come to a sudden stop- throwing the line out behind you. Then, on the forward cast, you start slowly to begin getting the rod to bend on the forward cast so that when you make the sudden (and complete) stop it propels the line forward, including the line you have laying on the ground. But if you try to make it cast too much line on your backcast and forward cast, your give it more weight than it can handle comfortably and the cast fizzles.
In this regard, it is possible to shoot some line (let out more line) on the backcast. But don’t overdo it. One good reason is that the main weight of the line is in the first 30’ of fly line, ordinarily. If you have more than the roughly 30’ of line out all of the heavy part of the line will be beyond the rod tip and the excess thinner line out the tip can act like hinge since it doesn’t have as much resistance to bending as the weighted part of the line does. Thus it will have trouble imparting the full power of the stopped rod tip to cast the line in a straight direction.
We have known this for years. Lefty Kreh and a host of other noted instructors, urge us all to mark our line to help us know when we have around 30’ of line out the tip. Marking your line is simple. Measure 16’ from the start of your fly line. With a 9’ leader and tippet, this makes this mark 25’ from the fly (9+16=25). Add another unique mark 25’ from the first mark and you are 50’ from the fly (9+16+25= 50). But with a 9’ rod, you have 32’ of fly line out the tip (9 [leader and tippet] + 9 [fly rod] = 18 then 50-18= 32. When the 50’ mark is at the reel, you have 32’ of fly line out the tip of the rod. You are close to having the proper weight the rod designers designed the rod to cast effectively. I usually take one or two more short strips and then cast away.
So, mark your line OR buy some new line. Many of the better line lines (awkward, I know so let’s start again. Knowing how few of us will mark our line, the line companies have decided to help us out by making the first 30’ of fly line one color and the rest of the fly line another color. This means that when the color change is at the rod tip, you have pretty close to 30’ of fly line out the tip- it’s time to cast.
Even if you are color blind (my dad had trouble with reds and greens which was a real problem when some states and cities reversed the colors on their traffic lights, putting green at the top and red at the bottom. He couldn’t distinguish the colors but he could tell which light was the brightest. My mother, brothers and I learned very quickly to warn our Dad when we saw those upside down traffic lights. My brothers and I are still here to tell the tale and neither of our parents died in car wrecks!) you should able to see a difference in shading and intensity of two different colors. When that color change occurs, get a foot or two of the forward part of the line inside the rod tip and start your backcast- slowly at first and then the hurry up and stop. You will be glad the line companies are treating us like dummies. To make sure we see the change, every line like this I have seen has light color and a dark color for obvious contrast. Stop, look and listen!
When There Are Knots in Your Leader/Tippet and It’s All Fouled Up
Just when you think everything is going well, it happens. The fly catches on the loop knot connection between the fly line and the leader. Or there is a big loop in the leader. Or, while changing flies, you notice a series of very small but very tight knots in your leader. Your equipment is trying to tell you something.
You are experiencing the much dreaded wind knots, what Lefty Kreh reminds us aren’t caused by the wind 99.99999% of the time but by bad casting technique. There are several causes:
-beginning the forward cast too soon;
-beginning the forward cast too late;
-raising your elbow during the forward cast;
-applying too much power on the forward cast;
-dipping the rod tip during the backcast and transition to the forward cast;
-stopping your rod tip too high on the forward cast
So, what do we do about it? Rather than re-invent the wheel, I went back to the article on wind knots and copied what was said then. These recommendations are still valid to avoid those little knots and those messed up leaders. I encourage you to look on this website for that article on Wind Knots.
So,
-Keep the rod tip in the same plane by not breaking your wrist on the backward cast;
-Do not start the back cast with the rod tip too high off the water- there will be too much slack in the line and you will wind up breaking your wrist and having a very wide loop;
-Make sure you let the line straighten out on the back cast;
-If it hurts, you are doing it wrong;
-Keep the elbow on the shelf and never let it (and your forearm) rise;
-Always keep your elbow “inside” your hand- except on very long casts when you must extend your forearm and your upper arm behind you to make sure you have enough distance to accelerate your line for the forward cast- but even then, try to avoid breaking your wrist or moving your elbow “outside” your wrist. [The rules of physics suggest that in a perfect world, a fly dropped will hit the water at the same time a fly cast straight out will hit the water. In other words, you don’t have extra time to have the fly travel a long distance. It will only travel a long distance if the fly line is traveling faster. This is accomplished by use of the double haul and taking your rod tip further back on the back cast while maintaining the tip in the same plane. This gives you more distance to accelerate the line in the forward cast. This, along with a well-timed double haul, will give you the line speed you need for a longer cast. Just don’t stop the rod tip too high without dipping it down slightly to get it out of the way of the loop, leader, and fly. Failure to dip the rod tip will lead to a tailing loop and may create a wind knot, which Lefty says is a “poor casting knot.”
In other words, Stopping, Looking and Listening to what your fly equipment is telling you really works.
In Summary
This chapter added very little to what you read before. In fact, the only really new item pertains to the multicolored fly line at 30’ and how you can use it to determine when you should start your cast. But it does underscore what I like to say, “The hardest thing for me about fly fishing is remembering how easy it is.”
One Final Hint
One final hint that seems really stupid but works wonders. When casting, hold you rod very gingerly. Don’t try to strangle it. Hold it loosely in your hand. The tighter you hold the rod, the more you will want to “kill” the cast by powering it with all your might. The horrid truth is that you will get your way. It will “kill” you cast- but not the way you wanted.
As usual, we encourage you to check the resources of Fly Fishers International and then go practice. Fly casting is not a natural move but must be learned. Check out the resources the the FFI and don’t overlook YouTube.
