Doing something wrong casting
Ok, Ive made my introduction here so now I am ready to start bombarding yall with questions. I have been out in the yard practicing casting and I keep snagging my fly line with my tippet about 8 or 10 ft from the end of my rod, like I am not getting enough height. End up with a tangled mess. Have a piece of sponge on the end of tippet. I make a pretty good cast every now and then. (Yea I know, a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then too.) Any suggestions?
I think I am gonna get my wife to make a video of me casting and maybe I can see what I am doing wrong. Should get a good laugh anyway!
How about a bit of heresy ??
Forget everything you know about how to "cast" and ignore all advice on the "proper" way to do it.
Start out just hanging out some line and waving the rod around in circles, half circles, zig zags, figure eights, loop the loops, and what have you. And watch the line while you are doing that. Pretty soon you will develop a good sense of the interaction of the rod and the line and what movements you make with the rod produce what results / effects on the line.
You don't need to have a backcast that goes nicely over your head and straightens out so you can make a nice foreward cast over your head. You can actually just pull the fly on a low trajectory almost right at you, let it pass you on the right ( if you are right handed ) let the line form a loop behind you or straighten out as it rises behind you if you have room and prefer to do that, and power a forward cast in the direction you want the fly to go. Just one example of many non-conventional and very effective casting techniques.
If you do want to spend some time watching video, I would recommend Simon Gawesworth's three DVD set on spey casting. None of that nice tidy stuff guys do with conventional fly angling gear - more like art and science rolled up in a 13-14' rod and a line that hardly ever looks like it's doing what a fly line should. Pay particular attention to Simon's demonstration on how to apply spey casting stuff to casting single hand fly rods. Then apply all those things to conventional gear minus the anchor that spey casters get with the water - just use an "air" anchor and good timing.
Seriously - if you get all wound up in those clock movements and stop here and stop there things, tight loops and open loops, and on and on, all taught very well by certified fly casting instructors, you can easily miss out on what it is all about: finding ways to get the fly where it needs to be to catch fishies and having fun doing it your way. But you do have to take that first step - just start waving that rod and line around in circles and have some fun doing it.
The rest will come naturally. Except the double haul. :shock:
John
Now back to your regularly scheduled conventional discussion on fly casting.