Since some people enjoyed my chapter on casting basics, I'll post another chapter. I'll have to do it in pieces, so bear with me. As before, if anybody sees anything I have wrong, please let me know and I'll correct it. And feel free to jump in with alternatives or clarification. Thanks!

Part 1

Wham! A trout strikes your fly and is hooked! Your eyes widen, your grin starts, your adrenaline flows and, chances are, you yell out something ? even if there is nobody within hearing distance. Congratulations! Enjoy the moment. It is an experience that will always thrill you, even after years of fly fishing and thousands of strikes.

Hooking up with a trout
Chances are that most of the fish you catch in your early days will be fish that hooked themselves. They bit on your fly and, with their mouths closed, moved away from you. This sunk your fly?s hook into their mouth.

As you get better, you will learn not to rely on the fish hooking itself. You will be the one who sinks the hook into the fish?s mouth, which is called ?setting the hook?. You?ll do this when you see the fish take the fly at the surface of the water. If you are fishing a sinking fly and using a strike indicator, you?ll do this when you see your strike indicator pause or move in a way that is not explained by the flow of the surface water. And, if you feel a tug on your line, it might be a fish that has bitten your fly, but has not yet been hooked.

The amount of effort it takes to set the hook depends on the distance between your rod tip and the fly, and on whether there is any slack in that length. The longer the line out and the more the slack, the more effort it will require to set the hook.

Keep in mind, though, that once the fish?s mouth is closed, your fly is in an area that is seldom larger than a teaspoon. You don?t have to move that fly very far to set the hook. You may want to practice your hook setting move by putting your fly in a spoon to see just how little rod tip movement it takes to pull your fly from the spoon.

If you only have 20 feet of tight line out, the setting motion is done with just a small wrist movementto move your rod tip in a direction away from the fly. If your fly is upstream from you, this can be an upward wrist movementand, thus, your rod tip. If the fly is downstream, many people prefer a sideways wrist movement.


If you have a long distance of line out and/or there is slack in the line, you may have to put your elbow into the hook setting motion. You are trying to get your fly to move the same small distance in the fish?s mouth, but it takes more movement of your rod tip to get the fly to go that distance.

The hook setting move should be as fast as your reflexes will allow when fishing nymphs. With nymphs the fish may have simply sipped in the fly and, once realizing that this thing doesn?t taste or feel like a bug, done the trout equivalent of spitting it out. Don?t do a huge yank of the fly. If the trout is in the process of spitting your fly, a big yank will pull the fly out of its mouth. A more gentle setting motion may enable the hook to sink into the trout before it has left the trout?s open mouth.

With a dry fly you?ll hook more fish if you pause for a second or two after the strike before setting the hook. This allows the trout to bite on the fly, turn, and head back down into the water, increasing the chance that your hook will catch in its mouth when you move the rod tip to set the hook.