How far is far?

FAOL Community Fly Anglers Online
1

Learned something about my casting distances the other day.

I’ve never considered myself much of a fly caster. I’m more into the presentation and catch the fish type. I’d rather tinker with trying to get different fly actions at the vise than go out and practice throwing the line. Really, the only time I paid attention to casting wa while I was doing it.

I knew I could cast around forty feet consistently. Never measured it, though, but I felt that was my comfort limit and only rarely did I try to exceed that ‘forty feet or so’ distance I was comfortable with.

Friend has a pool, and I wanted to to test some of the new fly designs I’ve been tinkering with for the last few months. He said I could use his pool. This is great place to try out flies, you can see them really well and learn what different rod or line manipulations cause the fly to do in the water.

His pool is not a large one. I stand at one end and make casts, keeping them short so that the fly lands against the far edge at the other end next to the diving board.

He’s watching me, and givign me some feedback on what the flies are doing after they hit the water, etc…

At one point, I ask, how long is your pool.

Forty feet, he says.

I was bit taken aback. I’d have thought it was like twenty feet.

So, now I really want know how ‘long’ my comfort zone casts that I thought were around forty feet actually are.

I go a nearby park with a tape measure and some old orange cones that my daughter used to use for sports drills.

I found out that I cast much farther as a matter of routine than I thought I did. I’ve now pushed my comfort zone casting distance out a bit farther in my mind. I’m not really casting farther than I’ve been, I just now have some clue as to how far that really is.

I guess that I’ve either gained some casting skills by just doing it, or I’ve always underestimated the distances I fish. I’d have thought it was normally the reverse, given that whole fisheman’s exageration thing.

For folks who really want to know, and in reality it doesn’t matter all that much, it was fun to put a tape to it.

Buddy

2

Distance can be a funny thing to estimate. I often misjudge things too. I fish a 10’ rod so i always try and estimate my cast by rod lengths. 30 -40 feet (only 3 or 4 rods) doesnt seem to far when you think of it like that.

Good idea with the pool. With the clear water you can really see how a fly moves (minus the current).

Tom

3

It is fun! I comfortably fish out to maybe 50 or 60 feet with my 7 weight. I can cast maybe 120 feet. I would have thought it a lot less but 105’ of line and hearing that backing knot going tick tick tick down the guides is a dead give away. Of course, that isn’t practical, never get a good hook set or accurate cast at that distance. I attribute it to the rod (Sage XP) far more than the caster (me). Lower line weights, now that’s a different story!

All that said, when it comes down to it, 40’ of line laid out, sure doesn’t look like as much as it really is!

4

On a small creek it ain’t. On a big river it is.

5

I’ve got most of my lines marked with the dot /dash method both at the tippet end and at the 30ft. distance.

6

You got me thinking now, I have never paid much attention to how far I could cast in numbers, always just in too far, move closer, or I can, do it. And I have a pool, a very good tool for practicing presentation and fly behavior.

7

I always judge distances by “baseball distance”. I was a pitcher for a long time and can tell you exactly how far 60 ft 6 inches is :wink:

8

Far enough?? To reach where the fish are rising!! :lol: How to get there?:confused:

9

Just remember that that 40’ of line laid out is actually closer to a 60’ cast.
40’ of line + 9’ rod + 9’ leader.

Kevin

10

I never really thought about it much until last summer. I was casting out in my back yard and noticed I was casting to my son’s soccer ball on the other side of the yard. Our yard is 75 feet so I know I was hitting the soccer ball on most casts at 75 feet. The thing is, I rarely cast that far in real fishing. 40-60 feet is a pretty average cast while fishing and much shorter on the small streams of the Smokey Mountains.

Jeff

11

It seems I can never cast far enough when fishing Hebgen Lake. How do those fish know my casting range and why are they always 5 ft out of my range? I’m always getting on my tippy toes to get closer to those fish.

12

I have cast the exact distance to every fish I ever caught. That is the only measure that matters to me. Having a number to tack onto it seems only to be for bragging rights or to use to judge others’ abilities against your own, which, since fishing is between you and a fish, is in my opinion crap.

13

When fishing lakes I always seem to manage about 10ft short of where the trout are and when fishing streams I always manage to cast too far and hook the bushes on the far side! Other than that I think I am doing just fine.:lol:
All the best.
Mike

14

Casting distance is great when fishing streamers or when you know a bigger fish is going to hit the fly hard enough to basically set itself by straightening out your line/leader.

It is a whole nother story to set the hook on a small dry fly to a sipping trout much past 50’.

aa

15

It doesn’t seem to matter much to me when I’m on a stream or river. It’s always just a little less than I would like. But when I’m practicing in the yard, 60 feet seems to be where my brick wall is. I’ve never cast a double taper though, and I wonder what kind of difference that would make.

16

I used to practice at the park beside a chain link fence. I assumed that the fence posts were 10 feet apart. When I finally got comfortable with 60 foot casts I thought I was pretty hot stuff. Imagine my ego boost when I found out that the posts were actually 12 feet apart, making my 60 footers to be actually 70 feet long.

I only need a long cast is when I’m fishing chronomyds with a bobber. The farther from the boat the better.

PS. Even Brian Chan uses Bobbers… Yikes! He even showed me how to rig one.

17

Rarely do we need to cast great distances unless you are fishing the warm tropical saltwater for bones or tarpon and the like or if you are spey casting for steelhead. Most of us fish in the 30 to 45 foot range on rivers and lakes. Sometimes you need to reach out and touch someone and you make a 60 to 70 foot cast but on rivers you are really asking for it. The river will have so many seams and different flow rates between you and the fly that line management is extremely difficult.

Far more important than distance casting is casting accuracy. On a river if you can’t set that fly down on the proper seam to drift a dry into the path of a feeding fish or on a lake cast that dry out to where a fish is feeding, then all the distance in the world means nothing.

The Danish Games or casting games like it are a great way to develop accuracy and judging distance. A number of years ago I was running a Danish Casting Game. Off to the side there was the distance casting area for those people who have to cast over 100 feet. You could hear them over there while they were trying to out do each other. Then they worked their way over to the Danish games. Talk about some ‘Blue Air’. As their buddies watched, they tried to cast the shorter distances for accuracy and the vast majority of them failed miserably. The had spent so much time and energy on casting long that they let their shorter casts and accuracy fall to the wayside.

Practice your accuracy in the 25 to 45 foot range. Don?t worry about the greater distances, they will come when you need them.

Larry —sagefisher—

18

My philosophy when teaching fly casting is that if my student can deliver the fly from Point A to Point B and it results in a hookup, then the cast is far enough.
As a professional guide, though, distance is of major concern. I don’t expect anyone to be able to cast 100 feet and I don’t put anyone in that position. What I do want is people who can cast 40 feet – accurately and quickly. Getting the fly to the proper spot quickly puts a smile on my face and it usually produces a fish – and that puts a smile on their face.

About four years ago, I had a first-time saltwater fly angler out. He told me that his casting skills weren’t great. I took him to a spot in Little Sarasota Bay where I knew bluefish, spotted seatrout, ladyfish, jack crevalle and pompano were plentiful. I had him anchor about 30 feet from the edge of a channel.

I told him that all he had to do was cast about 10 feet past the channel edge.

He stripped off about 35 feet of line and began false casting. And false casting. And false casting.

You could hear the end of the line cracking like a bull whip. He was false casting so fast that the line didn’t have time to fully unroll on either the back cast or forward cast. And when he finally let the line go, it flopped out about 25 feet. That was his best.

What to do?

I told him to pull his anchor up and move five feet forward and reanchor. He did. Now, his fly landed in the spot it need to be. And he caught plenty of fish.

Many of the folks I take fishing are from trout regions. And most don’t have to cast more than 25-30 feet. Some really don’t have to cast at all. I call it fly flipping.

It’s a little different in salt water. We fish big waters and you need to cast 40 or 50 feet quickly and accurately for most species. When it comes to nervous critters, the farther you can cast the better off you are.

19

For many years, my fly fishing experience was on small rivers and streams where a long cast was 40 feet. When I started fishing saltwater, especially off a flats boat, I got a rude awakening. When fishing for snook or redds in along the mangroves in the “ten thousand island” area south of Marco Island, you have to cast from the front of a flats boat to fish holding just under mangrove limbs up next to the shore. The guide will pole the boat from a platform over the outboard until he sees a fish holding. He can see that fish from 100 feet out but the fish can also see him. They will not usually spook until he gets within 70 feet or so. Your job is to cast up close enough to him from 80 feet away, that he sees the fly and comes out to chase it.

I just about had to relearn casting because the technique is so different. Oh yes, the basics still apply. But just because you can cast well at 40 to 50 feet deesn’t mean you can cast at 80.

If you really want to be good at distance, you must master the double haul and you must practice. On a very good day, I can sometimes get a whole line out, but I can only effectively cast to 80 feet or so. But that is usually good enough.

Bob

20

I cast far enough to catch fish. That is far enough for me.