Casting Basics - Part 1

FAOL Community Fly Anglers Online
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The best way to learn casting is to take lessons from a qualified instructor, preferably one certified by The Federation of Fly Fishers. You can find a list of their certified instructors at the FFF Web site. Your local fly fishing shop or chapter of Trout Unlimited may also offer fly casting lessons. Try to get into a group session. That is cheaper than private instruction and, as a beginner, you will probably get just as much out of it.

If these options aren’t available to you, you may be able to get a casting lesson from a friend who is a good fly caster. Be warned, though, that your friend may teach you some bad casting techniques and it is more difficult to overcome bad casting habits than to learn correct techniques right from the start.

There are many videotapes and DVDs that teach casting. I find these better ways of learning than by reading a book as they visualize things better. Look for names like Joan Wulff, Lefty Kreh and Mel Krieger. You can often borrow these from your local library or rent them from a nearby video store or fly shop.

The worst way to learn fly casting is from a book. I wish I didn?t have to write this chapter, but I promised to cover everything you need to know to catch a trout on a fly. I’ll do my best to teach you the basics. But I recommend that you seek out a qualified instructor and skip this chapter if that is an option for you. And I recommend that you expand upon these basics as you progress.

The basic principles of casting a fly are universal as they are based on the laws of physics. I’ve discovered, though, that there are variations in the styles taught to cast a fly in line with these principles. That was an important discovery as it allowed me to try different techniques to find the ones that worked best for me, the ones I’ll be teaching here.

There are many different types of casts. I’m going to cover the two fundamental ones, the roll cast and the basic cast, and some useful variations of these. You can, and should, learn other types of casts later, but the ones I?m showing you will cover the most common trout fishing situations.

Basic fly casting concepts

Unlike other forms of casting, you will not be removing any line from your reel during your cast with a fly rod. You will already have stripped? (pulled) out the length of line you want from the reel. You will cast that pre-stripped line only.

Let your rod do a lot of the work. That’s what it is designed to do. Your muscles provide the energy, and the movements of your arm and hand control the movement of the fly rod. The fly rod operates as a lever and amplifies the movement of the fly line that you cause by the movements of your arm and hand. It doesn’t take a lot of strength and power to cast a fly a long distance. A common beginner mistake is to use too much power. Try to achieve the distance of your cast with the least possible effort.

The fly rod is a flexible lever. When you move the rod it will bend from the pull of the fly line on it, storing energy. Causing the rod to bend is called loading the rod. When the rod returns to its original shape, it will return that energy to the fly line.

Casting is done by using the movement of your arm and hand to accelerate the rod tip to an abrupt stop.

Here’s a way to visualize that arm and hand movement. Imagine that you are standing in front of the mirror in a standard sized residential bathroom. Now imagine that your fly rod is a paintbrush loaded with paint. If you make the moves that splatter paint on the wall behind you and then on the mirror in front of you – without getting any paint on the ceiling, sink, counter or floor – you will have made the moves required for a good cast.

Try doing this move with your imaginary paintbrush. Notice how you accelerated the brush throughout the bringing of the brush back, and then brought it to an abrupt stop. You then accelerated throughout the moving of the brush forward and brought it to an abrupt stop. That “accelerate then stop” is one of the keys of a good cast.

Another visualization sometimes used in teaching fly casting is to imagine that you have an apple stuck on the end of a stick and you want to throw the apple forward. If you started the throw with a fast jerk of your hand, the stick would pull out of the apple and the apple would fall to the ground behind you. So you start the forward throw more slowly, accelerate the apple throughout your forward movement and than bring the stick to an abrupt stop once the apple was in front of you. The path of the apple?s flight will vary based on the direction the end of the stick was moving when you stopped it. If you stop it while the end of the stick was moving downwards, the apple will crash into the ground a short distance in front of you. But if you stop it high, the apple will travel quite some distance.

Use those visualizations if they help you at the start. But, as soon as possible, forget about paint brushes and apples and start thinking in terms of your fly rod, focusing on the path of the rod’s tip.

The movement of your rod’s tip controls what the fly line does during your cast. The path your fly line will travel during its flight is determined by the path that your rod tip was following when it came to its abrupt stop. Move your rod tip in a straight line during your cast and your fly line will follow a straight path. Move your rod tip in any way while your fly line is in the air and the fly line will make a similar move. For example, if you wiggle your rod tip while the fly line is traveling through the air, your fly line will develop a wiggle in its path.

It is far more important for you to learn how to cast accurately at short distances (30 feet or less) than to learn how to make a long cast. In most trout fishing situations, you will be fishing in streams that aren’t very wide and, the more line you have out, the harder it is going to be for you to control the drift of the fly and to hook up to the fish when it takes your fly. Even when you get to a lake or a pond, you’ll get more fish with short accurate casts than with long random casts.

Every cast should have a pre-determined target, the place where you want your fly to land on the water. In the majority of cases, your target will not be on the water’s surface, but anywhere from inches to two feet above the water. The fly will then fall on the water’s surface as gently as its weight will allow.

Your accuracy will come from learning to coordinate two lines. One is the line from your eyes to your target. The other is the line of the path your thumbnail follows during the cast. This thumbnail path line is an approximate indicator of the path of your rod tip. Remember: it is the path of your rod tip that really controls the path of the fly line.

As a generality, your casts will be more accurate when the line of your thumbnail’s path is closer to the line from your eye to the target. The shorter your cast, the easier it is to have these two lines be close together.

Four things determine the distance of your cast. (1) The length of the path your rod tip follows before it comes to its abrupt stop. The longer the path, the more time you have to accelerate the rod tip and the longer the cast. (2) How much you accelerate the rod tip during this path. (3) How abruptly you stop the rod. (4) By the loft of the fly line?s path. Just like when you are throwing a baseball, you can only get so much distance with a casting path that is parallel to the water. For longer casts, aiming the cast higher gives the line more time to travel before gravity pulls it to the water. This is not to say that you should be aiming high on most casts, just that you will have to aim higher when you need to make really long casts.

The casting clock
I’m going to be using the clock terminology here that used to be standard for fly fishing instruction. I think it is the best way to teach fly casting in a book, at least a book that doesn’t have a ton of illustrations.

Imagine you are standing with your rod in your hand and with a giant clock face pointing towards your right shoulder. (This is the same for people who are right-handed or left-handed. Southpaws, do not adjust!) Your feet are at 6:00, your head at 12:00, and you are looking towards 9:00.

I will be teaching you to move your rod in a path that starts with it pointed behind you at 1:00 and stopping in front of you at 10:00. But there are two important things to remember in this clock analogy.

The first is that the clock will not remain in one place pointed at your shoulder. It will start there when you have your rod pointed at 1:00, but it will move forward along with the forward movement of your hand as you move to the 10:00 position.

The other is that, once you have the basic 1:00 to 10:00 casts going well for you, you will want to learn to “move the clock’s midnight” to aim either your forward casts or your back casts higher or lower. I’ll cover this when we get to the basic cast instruction.

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Hmm, apparently the board is set up not to accept multiple large posts. So, I’ll post part 2 tomorrow…

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Keep it coming!

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The fly rod is a flexible lever. When you move the rod it will bend from the pull of the fly line on it, storing energy. Causing the rod to bend is called loading the rod. When the rod returns to its original shape, it will return that energy to the fly line.

True, but incomplete. For instance, after your back cast, your rod should bend from the weight of the line laying out behind you before you move the rod. Your rod should be at least partially loaded before you start your forward stroke, or you won’t have much of a forward cast. Maybe not so important on those -30’ small creek casts, but anywhere else (salt, lakes) where distance comes into play. Sometimes it takes patience to let that line lay out. My .02

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Remember This?

http://www.flyanglersonline.com/articles/cst/cst3498.php

Don’t feel restricted to FFF Certified casting instructors. There are many, many good casting instructors who are not FFF certified.

I live in the 8th largest city (by population) in the U.S. in the 5th largest county in the nation. Year round salt, cold, and warm water fishing with more than 35 species available to the fly rod angler. Two healthy fly clubs and three fly shops. But only 1 FFF certified FFF casting instructor listed in the FFF directory. But there are a number of very good instructors around who can be located through the local shops and clubs. If everyone here who wanted instruction restricted their search to FFF certified instructors few would find an opportunity to learn. One of the clubs offers free casting instruction every sunday; some of the instructors have been teaching casting for decades.

There are many other areas of the nation were FFF certified instructors are scarce. Local fly shops and fly clubs are often a great source for locating good instructors.

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Please jump in and correct anything you think I have wrong. Meanwhile:

Part 2
The grip and your wrist
Assemble your rod and reel, but don’t string it up for now. Unless you have unusually high ceilings, take your rod and reel outdoors for this next part.

Lay the rod grip over where your rod hand’s fingers meet the palm and close your fingers over it. Point the rod in front of you. Your thumb should be on top, opposite the side with your reel, which is on the bottom facing the ground. Don’t have your thumb flat against the handle. Bend it slightly at the first knuckle so that the top of the pad on your thumb (the top of the pad, not the top of your thumb) is against the handle. This will give you more strength in controlling the rod’s movement than if you had your thumb flat against the handle.

You may see some people casting with their index finger on top. Do not imitate them. You will become a much better fly caster if you use the thumb on top grip.

Your grip should be gentle during most of your casting. Don’t tire yourself out by holding your rod in a death grip. There will be a couple of places in a cast where you squeeze the rod more tightly, but you’ll be holding it gently most of the time.

Most of your casting movements will be with your elbow, forearm and shoulder. You will also be using your wrist a bit. This wrist movement is important, but too much use of your wrist will cause your rod tip to move in an arc. Remember: your line will follow the path of your rod tip – you don’t want it following an arc.

Here’s how much wrist movement you will use in your casting. Make a fist with your rod hand like you were about to punch somebody. Now look at your wrist. I’ll be calling this the “straight wrist” position. You will not have to bend your wrist back towards you beyond this straight wrist position. In fact, doing that can ruin your cast.

Now hold your rod using the correct grip. Simultaneously push on the rod handle with your thumb while you pull on the rod handle with the last three fingers of your hand. Notice how this results in three things. First, your wrist bends forward and down into what I’ll call the “bent wrist” position. Second, you end up with the rod handle temporarily squeezed more tightly in your hand. And, most importantly, you caused forward movement of the rod tip.

Notice how the small amount of wrist movement back and forth between the straight wrist and bent wrist positions moves the tip of the rod over a long distance. That’s important because you will use this wrist movement to accelerate your rod tip during parts of your cast. The idea is to add speed, not power, so the wrist movement doesn’t have to be done like you are using a hammer to pound in a nail. Do it smoothly for speed, not power, and you’ll avoid tiring your wrist.

Using too much wrist movement is one of the most common errors for a beginner. As you get better and try for longer casts, your wrist will move a bit more. It will go from a straight wrist position with the lower part of the rod at a 45-degree angle to your forearm to a bent wrist position with the lower part of the rod parallel to, and touching, your forearm. But, for now, just try to use the “push with thumb/pull with lower three fingers” move to get your casting done.

The path of the rod tip
I keep coming back to this for the simple reason that it is so crucial to your casting. Your fly line will travel most efficiently in a straight line, not a curve. When it travels in a straight line it is less likely to end up in a tangle.

If you took a pen and underlined this sentence, the point of your pen would be moving in a straight line that was caused by the straight-line movement of your grip on the pen. Easy, because your pen is a rigid lever! It is a little more difficult with a fly rod because it is a flexible lever.

As you move the rod tip back towards you the pull of the fly line on the rod will bend it forward. When you move the rod tip forward, the pull of any line behind you will bend the rod back. And, when the rod tip is stopped in either direction, it will first bend in the direction it was going and then return to straight. All of these bends reduce the distance between your rod hand and the rod tip. Try underlining this sentence by dragging your rod tip across it and you’ll get a sense of what I mean.

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I should also add that it is likely that 90% of the members of this board can cast better than I can. And, if the moderators believe I am doing any damage with this thread, I will not be at all offended if they poof it.

Part 3
OK, let’s start with the roll cast – the cast I found easiest to learn

Use your non-dominant hand to pull your leader and about 20 feet of fly line off your reel. Get this fly line out through your top guide. There are two ways to do this. One is to use your non-dominant hand to gently pull your line through the top guide. The other is to point your rod somewhat downwards, feed line into the stripping guide with your non-dominant hand, while wagging the rod tip to get the fly line out through the top guide. Let the fly line drop at your feet and off to the side of your dominant hand.

Pulling line off your reel is called “stripping line”. I will refer to your non-dominant hand as your “line hand” and your dominant hand as your “rod hand” from this point on.

Hold the rod in the standard grip, with your elbow slightly bent, your wrist in the bent down position and the rod pointed down towards the water or ground. Your thumb will be on top, but your forearm will be slightly rotated out so that you can see at least the top third of your rod hand’s little finger. This rotation has the effect of moving your rod tip off to your rod hand side. Hold the fly line against your rod with your rod hand’s index finger just tightly enough to keep the line in place.

Now slowly raise your rod tip, simultaneously using your elbow to move your forearm back towards your shoulder and your shoulder to raise your elbow to the point where your upper arm is approximately parallel to the water. As you do this, slowly bring your wrist back to the straight position. Remember, I said slowly twice here. This is one of the few instances where you do not use the “accelerate to an abrupt stop” movement for casting.

You are looking towards 9:00. Stop your rod tip when the tip is pointing at about 1:00 behind you as you are in the straight wrist position. Pause until the line being held up by the rod tip is hanging down behind you and slightly off to the side of your rod hand’s shoulder.

Now, visualize that straight rod tip path in the prior illustration. That’s what you are trying to get. You’ll be moving your hand and forearm forward to a point where your thumbnail is at a height somewhere between your chin your shoulder, your elbow is slightly bent and the rod is pointing at about 10:00.

OK, here goes. Using your shoulder, upper arm muscles and your elbow – and accelerating throughout the move to your abrupt stop – begin moving your hand and forearm in front of you with a constantly accelerating stroke. Use the “push with thumb/pull with lower three fingers” move to provide the extra acceleration at the end and stop the rod abruptly with it pointed at about 10:00.

If you have done this right a loop will occur in your fly line and that loop will unroll away from you. The weight and momentum of the line in this loop will pull the line from the pile in front of your feet and carry it away from you. As it unrolls, gently lower your rod tip towards the water to “present” your line to the water.

Although I found a roll cast to be the easiest to learn, I find that it also requires more energy in the forward part of the cast than other types of casting. If your line did not unroll straight in front of you and, instead, piled up in the water a short distance away or, worse yet, failed to come totally clear of the water on your cast, you may not have used enough energy in the cast.

There are two other reasons why your roll cast may not have landed straight in front of you. One is that your rod tip’s final direction as it stopped was towards the water, not over it. Another is that you may not be stopping your rod tip abruptly enough.

If you think the problem is that your stop was not abrupt enough, here’s a diagnostic tool.
Before you start the roll cast, slowly move your rod tip to the place where you want it to stop abruptly, rod pointed towards 10:00. Put the palm side of the fingers on your line hand against thickest part of your rod while it is in that position and leave your line hand there. Now, bring your rod back slowly, pause, and do a roll cast that bumps the thick part of your rod into your line hand’s fingers. Note how that abrupt stop sends your line out further? In addition to being a diagnostic, this is a technique you can use when you need to get a few extra feet out on a roll cast.

In all forms of casting, you will do best if there is no slack in your fly line when you begin the cast. If you are practicing on water, the energy efficiency and distance of your roll cast will be greatest if you don’t do the forward part of the cast until your fly line has stopped moving towards you on the water after you raise your rod tip to the 1:00 position. If you start the roll cast while the line is still moving towards you that line movement will feed slack into your cast, reducing your ability to load your rod.

Once you have the basic roll cast going well, try a sidearm roll cast. Rotate your forearm out so that you can see the inside of your forearm and your rod is extended nearly parallel to the water. Also tilt that imaginary clock face on its side so it is parallel to the water. Do the roll cast by moving your rod tip while keeping the rod parallel to the water.
The sidearm roll cast can be useful when it is windy or when you are trying to get under some tree branches or other obstacles.

Also practice doing a roll cast with your non-dominant hand. This can be helpful if you are able to do it. I’m very right-handed, but learned to do a left-handed roll cast fairly easily, so there is a good chance you can as well.

Next learn how to do a backhand roll cast. Rotate your forearm so that you can see the knuckles on the back of your rod hand. This will tilt the rod so that the rod tip is pointed off to the side of your line hand’s shoulder. Bring the rod back over that shoulder until the line hangs down behind you and off to that side. Now do the roll cast from that side.

The basic roll cast I showed you can be used to pick up line and cast it back out in front of you if the stream you are fishing has a current coming from the direction of your line hand. If the current is coming from the direction of your casting hand you’ll either have to use your non-dominant hand for the roll cast or the backhand roll cast. Either of these will help to avoid having the current push your fly under the path of your cast, which can cause a tangle.

Yeah, I know, the roll cast isn’t as pretty as the casting you saw while watching the movie “A River Runs Through It”. But a good roll cast is a great way to catch fish.

Here’s one of the most encouraging bits of news I can give any beginning fly fisher. Between 75- 90% of the typical trout’s diet consists of underwater insects, the kind of food that is mimicked by flies designed to drift under the water, not on top of it. That simple roll cast you just learned is a good way to cast these flies since your fly stays in the water for much of it and, thus, stays water-saturated enough to sink quickly once it is returned to the stream. So, you have just learned a cast that is going to be suitable over 75% of all potential trout chomps on a fly!

Also, with a roll cast, your line never gets any further behind you than where it is hanging down from the rod tip at the start. Thus a roll cast is often the only way you can cast without hanging your line up on trees, bushes or other obstructions that are behind you.

Roll casts are easier to do when your line is in the water than while practicing on a lawn. If you can roll cast well on the grass, you’ll love it when you get to water.

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Hmmm, managed to get in two posts today. Let’s see if I can get in part 4.

Part 4
Now we?re going to learn the basic cast. It is prettier to watch, but somewhat more difficult to learn, than a roll cast. It can be used to cast any type of fly.

Before I tell you what to do, it is best if you can visualize what you want to achieve.

The basic cast consists of four parts, divided in the middle by a pause. It begins with a ?pick-up? that removes your fly line from the water, then flows smoothly into a ?back cast? that sends your line in an unrolling loop behind you.

You will then pause while the loop unrolls until the line is straightened behind you.
When it does, you will bring your rod forward with your ?forward cast?, the same forward move you made in your roll cast, and the line will respond to this. The line will form an unrolling loop in front of you.

The fourth part of the basic cast is the ?presentation?. After you have made your rod?s stop and the loop is unrolling in front of you, the fly line is still controlled by the movement of your rod tip. You can cause the fly line to unroll in a straight line by simply lowering the rod tip gently towards the water in the same direction as your rod tip was traveling when it stopped on your forward cast. Or you can cause the line to unroll so that it lands on the water with a curve or a wiggle; I?ll show you how to get something other than a straight fly line presentation later.

It will help you to understand the mechanics of the basic cast if you know how much of your energy in the total cast is devoted to each part. Here?s the formula: pick-up 50%; back cast 25%; forward cast 15% and presentation 10%.

Let?s visualize what we want to happen with this basic cast.

We want to send our fly in front of us to an exact target that is slightly above the water at a distance that is equal to the amount of fly line, leader and tippet that we have outside of our rod?s tip top.

The path of the rod?s tip, most importantly its direction as it stops abruptly on the back cast and forward cast, will direct the path of the fly line. We will be directing that line so that it unrolls up and back behind us and then down and forward in front of us.

We want the fly line to be straight when it delivers the fly to this target. In order to be most efficient with this cast, we want our back cast to straighten out in a direction that is 180 degrees different than the path from the rod tip to the target on the forward cast. Looked at from the side, the path of the back cast and the forward cast are on the straight line, just in different directions. Looked at from above, though, the path of the pick-up and back cast will be parallel to, but about 4-inches different from the path of the forward cast.

Note that not all casts will be like this one. But this is the one I want you to visualize for your initial practicing of the basic cast.

Now that you have it visualized, let?s learn how to make this cast.

We?re going to start with 30 feet of fly line out beyond your rod tip. Rods are designed to load best with at least 30 feet of line and many beginners find it easiest to learn with 30 feet of line as a result. If you find in your beginning practice session that you cannot control this much line well, though, try moving to 20 feet of fly line to see if this helps you. Then work your way up to 30 feet of fly line and more.

First do a roll cast to get your fly line out in front of you. We?ll later want to eliminate this initial roll cast, but starting out this way is the easiest way to learn.

The reason I said that the basic cast is more difficult to learn than a roll cast is because of the pick-up and back cast parts of it. These not only require 75% of the energy we put into the total cast, they require us to do things we are not used to doing. We don?t have a lot of experience throwing things behind us. And it is not natural and comfortable for us to spend much time looking over our shoulder to see what?s happening back there. The forward cast and presentation use only 25% of the energy and we are used to throwing things in front of us where they are easy to watch.

It will help your learning a lot if you are able to watch your line unroll behind you after your back cast. This is easiest if you use an ?open stance? where your line hand-side foot is in front and pointed forward while your rod-side foot is behind and pointed off to the side. Later, when the time required for the line to unroll is more instinctive to you, you can cast with a ?closed stance?. A closed stance still has your rod-side foot behind so that you can rock your body back and forth without losing your balance, but both feet will be pointing forward. The open stance is best for your early practicing.

Grasp the rod in the ?thumb on top? position. Start with your forearm extended in front with the elbow slightly bent and your wrist in the bent-down position so that the rod points below 9:00. Again rotate your forearm slightly so that you can see at least the top third of your rod hand?s little finger.

Take any slack out of your line by stripping it in and hold the line against your rod with the rod hand?s index finger. It is very difficult to do a good basic cast if you start with slack in your line. By removing that slack you will also get the greatest energy efficiency in your cast.

The pick-up and back cast will bring your arm, hand and rod back to an abrupt stop at the same position they were in when you began the forward part of your basic roll cast. Do the pick-up and back cast as one move, accelerating your rod tip throughout until its abrupt stop at 1:00. Do most of this with your forearm, elbow and shoulder, with the final acceleration to that 1:00 position done by moving your wrist from the bent-down to straight position. Your forearm pulls the rod tip back in a straight line as your elbow moves in an up and back direction.

Now, pause. Turn your head and watch your fly line unroll behind you. As it does, rotate your forearm in slightly so that the path of your forward cast will be with the rod in a slightly more vertical plane.

It is time to start your forward cast when the fly line is not fully straightened out, but has unrolled to the point where looks a bit like a candy cane at its end, with just a few inches of fly line yet to straighten out.

The forward cast is the same move that you learned for the roll cast. For your early practice casts you will end with your thumbnail at a height somewhere between your chin and your shoulder. Using your shoulder, upper arm muscles and your elbow ? and accelerating throughout the move to your abrupt stop ? extend your forearm in front of you with a constantly accelerating thrust. For the final extra acceleration use the ?push with thumb/pull with lower three fingers? move. Stop abruptly with the rod pointing at about 10:00.

Watch the loop in your forward cast unroll. As it does, lower your rod tip gently towards the water to do your presentation and leave you ready to start fishing when your fly lands on the water.

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It worked! Now to try part 5!

Part 5
Loops
As you are watching your loop, try to see its shape. There are three general types of loops. A good loop, sometimes called a “tight” loop, has the upper and lower parts of the loop parallel. An “open” loop is really no loop at all as the upper part is on a more vertical line than the lower part. A “tailing loop” has the upper part falling below what should have been the lower part.

Much of the way your loop forms has to do with the direction of your rod tip’s final acceleration and abrupt stop. If you have accelerated your rod tip through a straight line, you can then control the size of your good loops with the final “push with thumb/pull with lower three fingers” move. If this move is fast over a relatively short distance, your loop will be “narrow”, with the upper and lower parts two feet or less apart. If the move is slower and over a longer distance, causing more of an arc in your rod tip’s final path, your loop will be “wide”.

One you have learned to cast good loops consistently, you should practice deliberately casting both narrow and wide loops. Narrow loops give more distance for the same energy as they get less resistance from the air as they unroll and their momentum is more forward. However, wide loops are helpful when you are casting a sinking fly with split shot weights and a strike indicator where a tight loop might cause a tangle.

Do not practice casting tailing loops. Practice how to avoid them. When a tailing loop unrolls the end of your fly line, leader, tippet and fly has to pass by what should have been the lower part of your loop. Chances are this is going to result in a fly that lands well short of your target, a tangle or, as I’ll explain soon, a “wind knot”.

There are two major causes of tailing loops. One is to begin the forward cast with too much power and speed instead of accelerating throughout your forward cast. The other is too short of a rod tip distance on your forward cast, stopping the rod too soon. As a generality, your forward cast’s rod tip path should be the same length as your back cast’s rod tip path.

If you get a tailing loop while fishing, bring your line in to check for a “wind” knot in your leader, usually in the tippet section.A wind knot is a naturally occurring overhand knot that forms in your leader and tends to get pulled tight. They aren’t really caused by the wind. They are caused by bad casts and tailing loops and should more accurately be called “casting knots”. Wind knots weaken the strength of monofilament by as much as half, even after they are untied, increasing the chances that a hooked fish may break your tippet and go free.

As you are casting, occasionally check your leader and tippet for the presence of these wind knots. If you find them while you are practicing, just ignore them. If you find a wind knot in your tippet or the thin part of your leader while you are fishing, immediately replace that section with new tippet. If you find one in the thicker portion of your leader, you can untie it (and take your chances of it breaking under stress) or replace your leader.

Variations
Once you have practiced the basic cast to where you are consistently getting your fly to where you want it, with the line and leader straight out in front of you, not piled in a heap at your feet, try some variations. For example, you can do basic casts with the rod tipped at varying degrees from vertical.

Also try “moving your midnight” on the 1:00 to 10:00 clock I’ve taught you. I’ve used the clock analogy because I think it is the best way to teach in book form. Real life fishing isn’t a book. There will be times when you will want the path of either your forward or back cast to be higher or lower. You can do that by “moving your midnight” position either forward or back around the clock and still keep the efficiency that comes from having your back cast’s path 180-degrees from your forward cast’s path.

Be sure to practice casting different lengths of fly line. You’ll notice that the longer the line, the longer you will have to pause for the line to straighten out.

Longer casts take a bit more energy for the acceleration, but not as much as you might think. You’ll probably screw it up if you try to overpower your cast. Instead, get the extra distance by reaching further behind you with your hand further from your torso on your back cast so that you can accelerate your forward cast through a longer rod tip path and aim your forward cast a bit higher.

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Darn! That worked too! Let me try some more. But first, a reminder. If anybody here wants to post an alternative view, I welcome that.

Part 6

There will be times when you want your next cast to be longer than your last one. There may also be times when you have an obstacle behind you that prevents your back cast from being as long as you want your forward cast to be. Fortunately, you can add a surprising amount of extra line during the process of just one cast by ?shooting line?.

Strip off another ten feet of line with your line hand. Don?t shake it through your rod. Just let it drop at your feet hanging from your reel and your stripping guide (the big guide at the bottom of your rod).

Up until now, I had you casting with your rod hand?s index finger holding the fly line against your rod ? a one handed cast. You could have had your line hand in your pocket if you wanted to do so. But now I want you to learn how to bring your line hand into the game. We won?t be using it a lot in the course of this book, but learning how to hold your fly line in your line hand will help you as you advance into other fly casting techniques in the future.

Don?t hold the line against your rod with your rod hand this time. Instead, gently pinch your fly line below your stripping guide between the thumb and index finger of your line hand so that there is somewhere between six and twelve inches of space between your line hand and your reel. Try to keep this space relatively constant as you do your back cast and forward cast. Your line hand will hold the fly line away from the rod and reel so that it doesn?t get accidentally wrapped around either as you do your cast. And it won?t move closer to your reel or stripping guide to accidentally introduce slack into your cast.

Now do a back cast and forward cast and, while your line is unrolling in front of you after your abrupt stop, release your line hand?s grip on the line. The momentum of your fly line will pull the extra line away from you. You can easily get as much as 20 feet of extra line out with this.

You can also shoot line on your back cast. Make your abrupt stop of the rod tip and then release your grip on the line. And you can shoot line during the forward part of a roll cast after you have made your abrupt stop.

Shooting line lets more fly line out through your rod tip; stripping line pulls it back in through your rod tip. You may want to do this to shorten the distance of your next cast, to change the path your fly is drifting downstream, or to move the fly in a way that makes it act like a swimming insect or minnow. Some people prefer to bring the small fish they have hooked to their landing net by stripping them in, not using their reel.

The easiest way to strip in line is to use both hands. Your rod hand holds the line against the rod while your line hand grasps the fly line behind the rod hand?s index finger, not in front of it. You loosen your index finger?s grip on the line while you pull line in through it, then retighten your index finger?s hold. You then repeat this as much as you wish.

You can leave the extra line you?ve stripped in laying at your feet if you wish. It is very common for fly fishers to have a few feet of fly line at their feet as they fish. This could be line that you might need over the course of your future casts, or line to pay out as your fly drifts downstream. This is acceptable.

Two caveats about having line lying at your feet, though. Don?t have so much that you are going to step on it or get tangled up in it. And remember that you will eventually have to get this line on the reel once you have hooked the fish if you want to use your reel?s drag in fighting the fish. The more line you have out, the longer it is going to take you to get the fish on your reel.

Part 7
A false cast is just like a forward cast but you don?t let your fly touch the water. Instead, you do another back cast. It sounds silly, but there are three situations in which you?ll want to do this:

? You?re fishing a dry fly and it gets waterlogged and isn?t floating on top of the water like you want. Doing a couple of false casts at this point will move the fly through the air and dry it out.

? You are fishing with your line out, but you suddenly have a desire to cast the fly significantly off to your left or right. You may not be able to do this with a single cast, but you can get your line pointing in the direction you want if you change the direction of your cast gradually while doing 1-4 false casts.

? Finally, you want your next cast to land your fly at a very precise distance. The false cast allows you to check and adjust the length of your line without slapping your line on the water and spooking a fish. Do a false cast to check the distance. Adjust the line length up or down by shooting or stripping-in line. Once you have the length right and in the direction you want, just complete the forward cast.

A false cast begins just like a basic cast. The difference is that you don?t follow through on the forward cast ? you stop the rod and wait for your line to straighten out in front of you at about shoulder level. When you the line is fully straightened out in front of you, do another back cast to 1:00. Repeat this if necessary, and then let the line fall to the water with your presentation move.

False casting is easiest with relatively short lengths of fly line. The more line you have out, the greater the chance that you will make a timing mistake over the course of 3-4 false casts. The more you practice and the better your timing gets, the less likely you?ll be to make a mistake while false casting. Practice will get you to the point where you can false cast long lengths of fly line repeatedly. In the meantime, I encourage you to try no more than 4 false casts at a time

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I’m on a roll! Here’s part 8.
Part 8
The real basic cast
Previously, as I was teaching you how to do a basic cast, I started out with you getting your line out in front of you with a roll cast –just because that would make it easier for you. In real fishing situations involving dry flies, you probably won’t want to do this as landing your line on the water could spook your fish.

The real way to start a basic cast is to strip out as many feet of fly line from your rod as you think it is going to take to get your fly to the desired destination. Have at least a few feet of it out beyond your top guide, the rest can be just pulled off your reel and laying at your feet. Do a back cast, forward cast, shoot some line, and then end in a false cast. Repeat this process until you have as much line out as you want, then complete your forward cast. If possible, do your false casting someplace that is not over your target fish where it can see your fly line and get spooked. Better to false cast behind it until you have your distance right, then switch directions to cast two to three feet upstream from your fish.

Windy Weather
Although a fly line has weight, it can be blown around by winds while in the air. This presents a challenge on windy days. It can also be a bit scary, as the wind can blow the fly so that your cast sets the hook in some part of your anatomy.

As a beginner, try to avoid casting on really windy days. But if you encounter wind while you are fishing, here are some of the techniques used to overcome it.

If the wind is blowing from your line hand side, it will be blowing your fly line away from you. Simply adjust by aiming your cast more upwind. It will take you some trial and error, and gusts will occasionally throw you off, but you’ll probably do OK.

If the wind is blowing from your rod hand side and blowing your fly line towards you, you have a problem to solve. You have a higher chance of having your hook catch on some other part of your line and causing a snarl or wind knot. Worse, you have a higher chance of hooking your clothing or skin.

The simplest solution may be to wade to the other bank so that the wind comes from your line hand side and work the stream standing closer to that bank. But this faces the risk of spooking nearby fish as you wade across the stream, the river may be too deep to wade or the other side may be inaccessible to you.

One solution is to do a backhand cast. I showed you how to do a backhand roll cast. You can also do a backhand basic cast. Rotate your forearm so that you can see your knuckles, which has the effect of tilting your rod over your line hand side shoulder. Do the basic cast over your line hand side and the wind will be blowing your fly line away from you, not towards you.

A roll cast with your line hand is another option. Some people can also do a basic cast with their line hand. I can’t.

Another technique is to do a sidearm back cast and, as the line is unrolling behind you, rotate your forearm to bring the rod tip over to your line hand side and do the forward cast on that side.

If you have a headwind coming towards you, aim your cast down to a target just an inch or so over the water. This may cause your fly and leader to disturb the water more when they land, but the wind’s disturbance of the surface water will reduce your need for a more gentle presentation.

If you have a tail wind, consider doing a roll cast. Since a roll cast has only a forward cast, the tail wind can actually help you. If you feel the need to do a basic cast in a tail wind, though, one technique is to aim the back cast lower and the forward cast higher. Also, a sidearm cast may keep the fly line below the wind in either a tailwind or headwind situation.

We get some incredible winds at times in Colorado. When they get to the point where I can no longer cast comfortably and reasonably accurately, I’ve learned to just stop fly fishing. I fish for fun, not for food, so there is no point in it when winds reach the speed where I am no longer enjoying the experience.

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And here’s the end of it all. Again, please, If you disagree with any of this, please jump in with corrections. I’ve intended this thread to help newbies and I do hope that it helps. The last thing I want to do is to cause any harm with it.

Part 9
Hauls
There are techniques called the single haul and the double haul that are really fascinating ways to increase the speed and momentum of your fly line and, thus, the distance it will travel. You can use these to cast really long distances or under windy conditions. And, once fly fishers have learned them, they tend to use them for much of their casting.

You?ll definitely want to learn them some day, but I am deliberately not going to teach them to you here. I think the timing and coordinated movements for haul casts are too difficult for most beginners, especially ones trying to learn casting from a book.

People who are doing haul casts hold the fly line with their line hand, not by grasping it with the index fingers of their rod hands. I taught you how to do this while shooting line and that will give you the foundation for learning to do haul casts later.

Experts versus Beginners
I attended a fly fishing show and watched three experts demonstrate casting. They had a section of the show floor roped off with about 80 feet of open space behind the casters and a shallow pool with about 80 feet of water in front of them. Between demonstrations regular fly fishers could use this area to try out rods being promoted at the show.

Watching the experts was very instructive, but I learned more from the comparison of the experts versus many of the people testing the rods. The experts were making perfect casts of 70 feet and more seem effortless. They were not big and powerful looking people --quite the opposite. I think the rod makers believe they get a more impressive demonstration when people who couldn?t beat you in an arm wrestling contest make these long casts.

The demonstrators got their results by great technique ? good rhythm and timing on their back and forward casts; rod tip speed, not power; long casting strokes and abruptly stopping their rods at the right moment. The amateurs were trying to match these long casts by putting a lot of strength into it, jerking their rods back with powerful tugs, putting their whole body into the forward throw. They weren?t getting the distance. Their fly lines were hitting the floor behind them and smashing into the water in front with a splash that would send any fish into hiding.

I?ve used words like ?accelerate? and ?abrupt? in describing how to cast. Don?t take these words to mean that you need to apply brute strength and jerky motions. As you practice, work on getting the slack out of your line before you start the cast, accelerating your rod tip with your wrist straightening and bending at the right moments and to the right degree, then stopping abruptly at the right points. Learn to load your rod on the back cast and forward cast.

Try to make your casts look effortless. Indeed, try to get more distance with less and less effort. With practice you?ll get that distance, more accuracy, and your arm will ache a whole lot less at day?s end.
Time to practice No matter what your source of casting instruction is, the only way you are going to get good at it is by practicing. The good news is that most fly fishers find it fun to practice and you probably will too.

The best way to practice is to get out on a pond or other body of still water near you since the tug of the water on your line is important to many casts. If you don?t have some water nearby, practice in your yard or a nearby park. Don?t practice on paved surfaces, as they will damage your fly line. Even casting on grass will do some minor damage to your fly line and shorten its life.

Do your early practicing at times when there is no wind to make casting difficult. You will later want to practice at windy times so you learn how to do this, but keep things simple at the start by avoiding windy days.

Keep your practice sessions reasonably short. Don?t tire yourself out. Work on a single type of cast until you are happy with the result or you start to feel bored or frustrated. When that happens, either move to another type of cast or go home. You?ll also find that it helps to practice in clusters of three or four casts. Then pause and analyze what is happening and what you might need to change to get a better result. Then do another three or four casts, etc.

You will get the most out of your practice sessions if every practice cast is aimed at a specific target. It will help you to develop the accuracy you?ll want.

As you practice, focus on casts that are within 60 feet. Once you get to the point where you can land your fly, with accuracy and a gentle landing, within 60 feet of your feet, you?ll be able to handle nearly all trout fishing situations. I truly enjoy watching the pros and semi-pros cast their entire fly line and some backing. But you don?t have to learn how to do this to catch trout. You?d be making a big mistake to wait until you can do it before you go out to catch some trout.

OK, time to go out and practice --preferably by casting into some water near you. Or go practice on some grass if you don?t have a good nearby pond. If you are practicing on grass, you can either ignore the strange looks you get from people passing by, explain that you are practicing your casting, or tell them you are fishing for Ground Trout. The latter is fun with small children, but may prompt a 911 call from adults.

Don?t try practicing your cast with just your fly line. You need to have at least a leader on it for it to cast properly.

This is the one time that you may want to buy a cheap fly from a discount store. Get a fly that is reasonably compact so it won?t have too much wind resistance, but is big and bright colored enough for you to see it. (I use a salmon egg fly for my practice sessions.) Use a pair of pliers to cut the hook behind the furry or feathered part. You now have a practice fly ? one that will not embed itself into your clothing or any parts of your anatomy if you make mistakes. Still, be sure to wear eyeglasses or sunglasses while you practice casting. Even a ?hookless hook? can damage your eye if it hits you there.

If you don?t want to go to the trouble of making a ?practice fly?, you can just tie a small piece of brightly colored yarn to your tippet and practice cast that. Put floatant on that yarn if you are practicing on water. I prefer the practice fly, though, because it more closely matches the weight of an actual fly.

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Having observed, spoken with and even tested (a whole three questions) a number of certified casting instructors. In my opinion and its just my opinion, ‘certified’ doesn’t necessarily mean qualified to be recommended. Knowledgeable and well meaning as they may be, were simply not insightful enough to consider the students understanding first. If a student had the same understanding of instructors language intent, the student would be the instructor in short order and often are in my experience.

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Oldfrat,
Is it possible to get this in a Word doc? I can cut and paste, but I do well when I read and visualize. I also can then read this sipping a beverage and “seeing” myself doing the steps.
Thanks,
Mike

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melk, you can e-mail me at oldfratnospamplease@earthlink.net and I’ll send you a word file. Just delete the obvious parts of that e-address.

Or you can just use your left mouse button to highlight the parts you want, press your right button to copy it, and then paste it into a Word file.

I do hope you find it useful. I also hope any of the 90% or so of folks here who can actually cast way better than I can will jump in and correct anything they find wrong. Remember the old saying, “Those that can, do. Those that can’t, teach.”

16

I need to add an acknowledgement here. The basic casting stuff I posted came from a manuscript I wrote several years ago for a beginners fly fishing book. A whole series of events led to it never being published. But I got a lot of help in the writing process from a number of FAOLers.

The casting chapter that you see here was helped immensely by Michael Franz, a FFF certified casting instructor, who spent a lot of time on the phone with me after reviewing the drafts. Michael used to post here as Miamivise. If there is anything good about the instruction, he gets the credit. If there is anything wrong with it, I get the blame. I haven’t seen any posts from him in a long time. I sure hope he is doing well and will be forever grateful for his help!

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“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein When you learn enough that you can assist students with out using the word “cast” you’ll be a more effective instructor. Hardest most valuable lesson my students ever taught me.

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Being new to this fly thing,I thank you for the lessons.You explain it very well.A lot of instructors assume the student understands all terminology and leaves the student baffled.Now if I can get this computer word thing figured out I will be OK.Ray

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Re: copying

Download a free PDF writer such as “Cute PDF Writer”…either highlight what you want in this thread or just click on print and the writer will come up as one of the choices click on it and then select where you want to store the PDF…if you high lighted… pick selection and it will store just what you selected…if you didn’t high light… it will store the whole thread.

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qrrfish, I appreciate the feedback and take no offense. I spent a lot of time when I was writing this trying to get it down in writing using fairly simple terms, but doing it all without needing illustrations as they would be expensive. (I don’t draw well.) I am certain it could have been done better with a lot more editing time. But, once I hit retirement age, I found I was more interested in time on the water and time sleeping than time editing.:slight_smile:

So, instead of polishing it for publication, I just posted it here for free in the hopes it might help someone.