SLACK LINE – YOUR ENEMY

June 7, 2010

You’ve heard it before, line control is everything. It is THE thing which makes a cast work, proper line control.

What does that mean?

You’ve made a nice forward cast upstream and you’ve retrieved your fly line as it comes back toward you. Now you’re ready to make another cast. Just like trying to move the lawn sprinkler by grabbing the hose and pulling it, the sprinkler doesn’t move until all the hose between you and the sprinkler are tight - until all the slack is gone.

You can’t make a cast until the slack line is gone. If your slack line is on the water you can retrieve it by doing some figure 8 or loops retrieves in your line hand and then pick up your fly with a wiggle or roll-cast pick up.

Recently I watched a well-equipped angler attempt to fish a lovely set of riffles on DePuy’s Spring Creek. His casting was good enough. The lay required a 40-foot cast upstream and then let the fly ride down the riffle and then mend a little line and follow the fly down the run with the rod tip to the tail out.

He knew what to do, but he didn’t do it. Yes, he retrieved some line as the flow carried the fly down the riffle but before the fly had reached the tail out slack had formed from the tip of his rod becoming a big loop back to his fly.

I know there are fish right there because I spent a half-hour watching them flash about before he got there. (We were there checking the mist nets for bird banding.)

His fly stopped mid stream several times. He never picked up on it. The amount of slack in his line stopped the message he had a strike, and he didn’t see it either.

I know when we fish in beautiful places it is easy to get caught up in it all, but the name of the game is fly fishing which hopefully translates into catching. It can - but you have to mind the slack.

There is a positive use of slack which I don’t want to miss, that is in making a presentation.

When you practice casting (you do that right?) especially if you set out some paper plates to work on accuracy, you make straight-line casts.

If you make that same cast to a rising fish you will have instant drag. Instead you want to have a little slack in your line - a slack line cast, not a lot, just enough squiggles to get a drag-free drift. The idea is for the fly to be floating along just like a natural with no drag.

And yes, you’re going to have to practice that too. ~ LadyFisher

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