I knew it would happen. Even without an attack of stage fright,
which I suspected would hit me (and it did), it was bound to
happen: once I began casting a fly rod under the eyes of
instructor James Castwell, he would detect multiple flaws
in my stoke and then, precisely because he is an instructor
who takes his avocation seriously, he would fall upon me like
an African lion pulling down a hapless wildebeest calf.
I’m at the 2007 Idaho Fish-In, one of sixty-one fly fishers
headquartered at Three Rivers Resort in Lowell, Idaho. It’s
daytime at the moment, but like a moth to flame I’m drawn across
the campground toward a cabin inside which reside FAOL co-publishers
Castwell and Ladyfisher. For weeks they had publicized in their
website that Jim would hold casting clinics open to anyone interested.
I was definitely interested in letting him critique my casting
stroke; in fact, that was one of the main reasons why I’d driven
1,750 miles to attend this Fish-In.
Yet now that the opportunity for receiving his expert analysis
was here, I couldn’t muster the courage to walk over there. I
might never have done it had I not seen a small group of people
taking turns casting a fly rod with Castwell watching them closely.
No lightning bolts were flickering from the heavens to strike dead
any of those people. Perhaps I, too, might survive a few innocent
test casts?
Suddenly a 9-ft. fly rod was thrust into my hand and there I stood — Mr. Warm Water Contributing Writer demonstrating his stroke for
all present to judge. I gotta be nuts: was there a more delectable
butterfly for Castwell to pin on his specimen board? But he’d
netted me, so all I could do was take a deep breath, start my
right arm in motion andétry to do what I do.
And at first I did great, sending Scientific Angler’s newest floating
line farther and farther out through the rod guides, quickly reaching
what I consider to be my normal maximum-distance fishing range. I
should have quit right there and stepped out of the spotlight with
an impeccable reputation. But no: I kept on throwing after hearing
glowing compliments voiced by the onlookers — words of praise such
as “Nice loop, Joe!” (Whatever “loop” means).
I thought to myself, “Hey, look at me! A guy from Kansas actually
knows how to do this right! Castwell hasn’t uttered a peep! I’m
BAD!”
Then my false casts crossed the Rubicon, entering into what years
of suffering and embarrassment have taught me is my Danger Zone,
and the thing I’d feared would happen did: my stroke exploded
like a hand grenade. It’s a good thing Castwell outfits the
leaders on his instruction rigs with fluffs of yarn; had a
real hook been involved every living thing inside a 75-foot
radius might have been impaled.
Moments like these are what casting instructors live for.
Like a National Transportation Safety Board investigator
ferreting out the cause of an airliner crash, Castwell
began picking through the rubble:
“What’s this thing with your right arm?” he demanded, taking
back possession of his rod to demonstrate an error I’d
committed by extending my right arm upward instead of
keeping the elbow down by my side.
“And square up your body to the target; you stand slightly
sideways when you cast,” came the next criticism, leading
me to wonder if my irksome habit of putting too much mustard
on the final forward cast is aggravated, perhaps even caused,
merely by my stance.
“And your right index finger on the rod handle — what’s it
doing up there? Your thumb should be on top, never your
index finger.”
Huh? My index finger? How did Castwell spot that during my
casting? But he had. Mechanically, it made sense that having
the short, stronger thumb resting on top of the cork handle
will anchor the back-stroke and steer the forward stroke,
resulting in greater power attained with less physical
effort expended. I’d just never thought of it that way before.
As my eyes began glazing over from the strain of absorbing
all this information, Castwell handed his rod to a woman who
was standing shyly nearby. She immediately confessed to being
a total novice who had handled a fly rod only once or twice,
each time with miserable results, absolutely no success.
Castwell nodded, politely led her to the launching pad,
stepped back and said simply, “Go for it.”
Brave woman: she commenced false casting, gradually working
out line. But because of her 9 o’clock/3 o’clock stroke the
fly line soon began piling up on the ground directly in front
and in back of her. Between these crash landings the line got
jerked high overhead in tall rainbow arcs. She had succeeded
in putting many feet of fly line in motion but distance-wise
that little fluff of yarn (representing a fly) was going nowhere.
Her rainbow arc throws were duplicating exactly how three of
my best fishing buddies cast a fly rod on a regular basis.
I even find myself doing it occasionally. My theory as to
why so many people do this? It’s a muscle memory problem — a holdover from years of using the casting stroke required
for launching heavy baits and lures with baitcast and
spincast rods.
But in less than 5 minutes Castwell had the woman dialed in.
This he accomplished by offering her a common, everyday
metaphor to visualize:
Think of the fly rod as being a fly swatter with which you
are going to whack an insect that’s sitting three feet away
high up on a house wall. To kill this skittish insect you
don’t let your whacking stroke proceed all the way forward
to waist-level (otherwise you bend the fly swatter). Instead,
bring your forearm sharply forward until it almost reaches
the wall, then you stop the motion and let the swatter’s
shaft flex forward so that the swatter’s head smacks the
insect before it can escape.
A very easy metaphor to visualize. Once the woman was doing
this forward “whack” correctly with the proper snap of her
wrist, Castwell asked her to visualize whacking a second fly,
one that is sitting high on an imaginary wall three feet
behind her. Don’t twist around and look; just bring your
“swatter” straight back with the same motion and kill that
second fly, too. Whack forward, brief pause, whack back.
She does it, and now she’s killing both insects, swatting one,
then the other, then the first again, then the second again,
all the while using the same confined but sharply applied
death-dealing strokes.
And all of a sudden this novice caster’s pantomime of a
double-insect dispatch became a physical reality whereby
each flick of her fly rod was gunning 40 feet of line — plus that fluff of yarn — through the air like bullets
shot from a gun. It was an astounding transformation to
witness, and I hope that woman gets out on the water very
soon and puts her newfound stroke to productive use by
catching some fish.
To me, though, the most impressive thing was watching Castwell
demonstrate what is known as the double-haul. I was not exposed
to fly fishing as a youth; perhaps as a consequence I’ve always
considered the double-haul a trick cast — albiet the icon that
embodies the ultimate in fly fishing — a cast only the very best
fly fishers attempt, and then only when trying for maximum range.
Many years ago I studied the mechanics of the double-haul by
reading books (that is, by looking at a progression series of
still photos). More rarely, I’d seen it demonstrated on TV
fishing shows. But while watching Castwell, who was standing
only five feet away, what immediately struck me is that the
way those other people executed the double-haul and how
Castwell does it…the difference is night and day.
Rather than using exaggerated up-and-down yanks with the
left arm (which I thought was mandatory because I’d seen
it done that way in every prior teaching demonstration),
Castwell executes the double-haul using almost imperceptible
downward flicks of the left hand. His left hand (holding the
fly line) flexes from the wrist with a movement so subtle it
appears incapable of delivering an energy boost to the cast.
A few minutes later the instruction rod rotated back into my
possession and I had a chance to mimic Castwell’s method. I
was stunned, first at the ease with which I could perform the
slight downward hand tugs and, second, at the increase in line
velocity and distance that happens during the “shooting” phase
of the double-haul when the left hand releases the line on the
rod’s final forward stoke.
Indeed, these two benefits may explain why Castwell advocates
that people use the double-haul as a matter of everyday routine.
Hearing him say that startled me because, again, I’d always
considered this a trick cast to be attempted rarely. By the
end of the Fish-In, I left Lowell resolved to use his easier
version of the double-haul when fishing the Kansas waters
where I live.
My first opportunity to do so was the morning of October 8th.
I drove to a nearby lake, parked and pulled from its case my
9-ft., 3-wt. St. Croix Avid fly rod. For almost two years
this rod has languished in storage after I opted to go ultralight
with a 00-wt. rod. But at the Idaho Fish-In I’d used Castwell’s
9-footer so I thought it sensible to stay with that rod length/rod
weight; perhaps it would help lock myself into the double-haul’s
form.
That Monday morning, throwing my Old Reliable nymph, I didn’t do
too badly, either. I caught ten keepers, the longest an 11-inch
redear sunfish. All ten fish are now parked in my freezer in the
form of twenty boneless panfish fillets.
Not until after I’d left the lake did it hit me that I’d lost
focus: I’d been more intent on catching a nice mess of panfish
than practicing the double-haul.
So two days later, at mid-afternoon I returned to the lake with
not one but two major objectives: 1) practice the double-haul
every chance I got, and; 2) stay until one hour before sundown,
when I would tie on a tiny midge and try to catch a fish with it.
Iowa’s Rick Zieger catches scads of panfish on midges. He does
it all the time, scoring with such regularity that I know I’m
missing out on something very important by not giving midges a
fair shake.
The curiosity I’d felt all morning about these two experiments
was killing me. I’d now confirmed (a few times anyway) that
Castwell’s double-haul works for me when I’m using my 9-ft.,
3-wt. rod and throwing the relatively heavy #10 Hare’s Ear Nymph.
So how much easier will even longer casts be once I’m throwing
a virtually weightless midge?
At the lake, after parking I tippy-toed down the bank but despite
my lightest footsteps I saw in the shoreline shallows a number of
quick surge waves indicating fleeing fish. Careful though I’d
been, still my footsteps had spooked them. Well, probably just
some bluegill dinks, the kind that hug the shoreline for fear of
entering deeper water where predators lurk. Spooking off those
pee-wees is no great loss. I tied on a #12 Pheasant Tail Nymph
and began doing double-haul drills, throwing straight out into
the lake arm’s depths. Everything was going great, the nymph
zooming out to impressive distances with little effort.
I could have been content doing only this, and in one sense I
was quite satisfied. But no matter how nicely my casts are
working on any given day, I personally reach a point where
the physical pleasure of casting becomes an empty exercise
unless it is occasionally accompanied by the climactic event
of the fly absorbing a strike, and strikes occasionally followed
by landing an actual struggling fish. Because without the reality
of catching a fish (the equivalent of performing with a live band)
for me the sport of fly fishing is stripped of any real value (like
singing at a karaoke bar).
Surely fly fishing instructors the world over, Castwell included,
would agree that the whole point of their teaching is NOT to help
people stand in beautiful outdoor places waving expensive rods
and looking stylish by performing mechanically perfect casting
strokes. No: the whole point of their instruction is to help
people deliver an artificial fly within range of a hungry fish
so that the fish might be persuaded or provoked to take said fly
in its mouth as food, and if a hookset follows that event the
student has a chance to bring the fish to hand.
So I looked around at the lake, trying to figure out why I
wasn’t catching anything despite having made some 100 successful
double-haul casts with a beautifully tied Pheasant Tail Nymph.
As reluctant as I’ve become to giving up on a nymph pattern, I
had to concede that one possible problem was I’d been throwing
a fly the fish weren’t interested in.
Well, hadn’t I come here this afternoon intending to try a midge
pattern? It’s early yet, but I’m gonna switch right now. Inside
my fly box are four or five midges, one of them so tiny that
knotting it to my tippet might require the use of a scanning
electron microscope. But is that #24 midge the same size Rick
Zieger uses to waylay all those big Iowa bluegills and crappie?
Or does Rick use midges that are bigger — or even smaller yet?
I didn’t know, and so for the purpose of continuing my casting
practice I started with the largest midge in my box, a #14
Black Gnat.
Actually, I wasn’t sure if a Black Gnat is the “correct” pattern
used to mimic the midges found in nature. (Acknowledging that
in most people’s opinion any gnat is the moral equivalent of a
midge, and vice versa.) The body mass of this #14 pattern
could easily make fifty of the tiny flying insects I think
of as midges.
At any rate, after surgeon knotting 18-inches of 5X tippet to
my 7 -foot 4X tapered leader, the big Gnat was hitched to the
wagon and ready to go — but where do I throw? One of the
interesting environmental aspects of this lake arm today was
the southerly breeze that was sweeping its surface — a southerly
breeze despite the fact that the prevailing wind passing over the
lake today was coming out of due north. When casting straight
out I was throwing into a horizontally rotating eddy wind — a
north wind curling down off the tall hills behind me.
Looking at the shallow water at my feet, it was glassy smooth
from the weedline to a distance of some ten feet out (give or
take depending on the varying wind speed). A thin layer of
surface scum coated this calm water zone while out in deeper
water, ripple waves were moving toward shore. It occurred to
me that any flying insects unfortunate enough to fall onto the
lake surface farther out would eventually be transported into
this calm water zone. The possibility existed that some fish
might realize this, too, and be holding close against my shoreline
in very shallow water waiting for incoming insects to accumulate
like vacation newspapers on the driveway.
Earlier I’d sent a few PTN throws into this calm water zone
with the outcome being zero hits. I would now try again using
the Black Gnat, a wet fly pattern that descends slowly through
the water column after touchdown. Perhaps I could sell this
large Gnat as an appetizer until dusk when the Real Meal
arrives — those innumerable tiny midges of the night that
begin hatching around sunset.
Casting parallel to shore, immediately the calm water zone
began surrendering keeper bluegills. After catching the
third fish I started experimenting with a double-haul thrown
sideways — facing the lake but false casting left and right
in front of me (as opposed to forward and backward if I’d
been casting straight out). To my surprise and relief, the
double-haul works pretty good thrown sideways.
The greatest tactical benefit of using the double-haul was
that I could nibble into areas of the calm water zone that
lay farther away down the shoreline. Remember how upon my
arrival I’d spooked a bunch of fish that were holding tight
against the shore? Well, after catching three keeper-size
bluegills in this same sort of water, it dawned on me that
a double-haul sideways cast lets me stay farther away from
any fish occupying this zone…while simultaneously trying
to catch them.
Seven keeper bluegills quickly fell prey to the Black Gnat when,
following another double-haul sideways throw, the fly was settling
slowly toward bottom. The leader exhibited a twitch and I lifted
the rod tip anticipating another bluegill, but found myself
connected to something that was absolutely not a panfish.
Whatever this powerful creature was, it never panicked and
jumped into the air like largemouth bass typically do.
Fifteen nerve-racking minutes later — during which I reducing
my drag setting three times to reduce the odds of a break-off — finally I beached the fish.
This incident only shows that once you start ringing the doorbell
at Mr. and Mrs. Bluegill’s house you should not assume that a
bluegill is who will answer the door? In this case, the door
got yanked open by an 8 lb. 2 oz. channel catfish.
If the double-haul cast had not maintained my position far enough
away to keep this marvelous catfish from detecting my presence it
is unlikely I could have sneaked within catching range without
spooking him, even if I’d known he was there (which I never suspected).
I guess the point of this story is that FAOL readers who see
an opportunity to attend one of the Fish-Ins should go if for
no other reason than to step to the plate and let Castwell
critique your stroke. Let him praise you, scold you, correct
you, whatever. It’ll be worth your time.
Castwell enjoys poking fun at himself, as you will see by the
Superman costume he sometimes dons. Feel free to chuckle out
loud: it’s pretty funny. But never forget that he is there
because he wants to help you hook and land so many fish that
your exhausted arms will fall off. (In my case, just one big
catfish made my happy arms feel like falling off.)
So to all you FAOL readers who’ve never attended a Fish-In but
have considered doing one, and to all you fly rod flingers who
are naturally reluctant to get pinned on Castwell’s butterfly
board, my advice is:
Start planning for your trip, and fear not, because
Castwell
=
Catch well
~ Joe
About Joe:
From Douglas County, Kansas, Joe is a former municipal and
federal police officer, now retired. In addition to fishing, he hunts
upland birds and waterfowl, and for the last 15 years
has pursued the sport of solo canoeing. On the nearby
Kansas River he has now logged nearly 5,000 river miles
while doing some 400 wilderness style canoe camping
trips. A musician/singer/songwriter as well, Joe recently
retired from the U.S. General Services Adminstration.
Joe at one time was a freelance photojournalist who wrote the
Sunday Outdoors column for his city newspaper. Outdoor
sports, writing and music have never earned him any money,
but remain priceless activities essential to surviving the
former ‘day job.’
Originally published December 3, 2007 on Fly Anglers Online by Joe Hyde.