PODCAST: Dry Fly Skills Series #3 — Casting and Mending — S12, Ep4

by | Aug 25, 2024 | 7 comments

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Our discussion here is about casting dry flies, and that’s where all good fly casting starts. With a dry fly, there’s no weight at the end of the line to help us out. No split shot, no tungsten bead, conehead or bobber. Refining the dry fly stroke truly teaches us what the fly rod is built to do.

Ten and two. Acceleration and crisp stops between two points. Pause and allow turnover to happen. Feel the rod load and watch it all happen with the fly line in the air. Once you have that timing, your baseline is set, and you can take that same stroke to any rod angle, punching the fly around and laying things out just how you want them with a few adjustments.

Good mending is setup by good casting. Put the two together, and you can feed slack to a dry fly for perfect drag free drifts.

Having command over all of it . . . is a lot of fun.

My friend, Matt Grobe, joins me to for a great discussion on casting and mending dry flies.

Resources

READ: Troutbitten | Category | Dry Fly Fishing
READ: Troutbitten | Ten and Two
READ: Troutbitten | Put More Juice in the Cast
READ: Troutbitten | Five Tips for Better Mending

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Season Twelve of the Troutbitten Podcast continues next week with episode five. So look for that in your Troutbitten podcast feed.

Fish hard, friends.

 

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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com

 

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Domenick Swentosky

Central Pennsylvania

Hi. I’m a father of two young boys, a husband, author, fly fishing guide and a musician. I fish for wild brown trout in the cool limestone waters of Central Pennsylvania year round. This is my home, and I love it. Friends. Family. And the river.

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7 Comments

  1. Harvey Leaders are the best!!

    Reply
    • Hi
      For dry flys are you still using your 10 ft 4 wt rod?
      Thank you!
      Love what you do

      Reply
      • Yes, absolutely. That’s one of the reasons I choose it. Because the rod I carry does everything I would like, without compromise.

        Reply
  2. Dom,
    When mending the line and leader should my goal for the leader be 30%, 50%, 90%? The obvious reason for my question is the more leader I try to mend the more I move the fly.
    Thanks,
    Scott

    Reply
  3. Guys : Do you have a rod dedicated only to dry fly fishing? If so would you cut the loop off the fly line and either snell ,splice, nail knot or blood knot the Harvey to the fly line and would you based on stiffness change your transition piece connecting fly line to Harvey. Would you change that transition piece if you went from 4 wght to 5 or 6 weight
    Lastly have you any thoughts on Double taper versus weight forward lines and how they compare and impact the Harvey’s performance

    Reply
  4. Great podcast! I think I do a lot of these mends, but there’s a lot more I can learn here. One thought: have you thought of shooting a drone video showing the various mends? An overhead view of how the line travels over the water would give me a good sense of the angles you use. Cheers, Toney

    Reply

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Domenick Swentosky

Central Pennsylvania

Hi. I’m a father of two young boys, a husband, author, fly fishing guide and a musician. I fish for wild brown trout in the cool limestone waters of Central Pennsylvania year round. This is my home, and I love it. Friends. Family. And the river.

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