** NOTE ** Video for Casting Forehand and Backhand appears below. Fly casting differs from spin casing in a few key ways, and here’s one one of them: You need both a forehand and a backhand cast to achieve effective presentations. Trying to fit a forehand cast on the...
There are no flying fish in Montana, not in Pennsylvania, and not anywhere. Norman Maclean’s line in A River Runs Through It sums this up: One reason Paul caught more fish than anyone else was that he had his flies in the water more than anyone else. "Brother," he...
If you have it, accuracy might be something that you take for granted. Oh, I’ll just punch the fly under those tree limbs and land the fly with an upstream curve to compensate for the swift current rolling sideways off the mossy rock. If that’s easy for you, then...
It’s a word thrown around in fly fishing circles a lot — turnover. But the concept is commonly misunderstood. No matter what type of fly we’re casting, and no matter the type of leader, we need our rig to turn over. It’s the best way to accurately place the fly in the...
Finding the fulcrum with your trigger finger, and cradling the rod in your hand makes for effortless casting. If your rod hand aches at the end of the day, you’re doing it wrong.
Everything about casting and drifting improves by holding the rod with barely enough pressure to keep it in your hand. The fish will follow.
After the nymph falls into position, we want it to spend some time there. But if we constantly set at the end of the fall, the nymph never has the chance to drift, and the trout don’t get an opportunity to eat on anything but the drop.
A good drift should follow the drop. The free fall and the drift are a successful pair. And they work best together . . .
If you’re thinking about a new fly rod (and who isn’t), it’s helpful to understand the upside and downside of extra length. Whether your intentions for the new rod are tight line tactics, streamers, dries, or a versatile tool that can easily tackle all of these, the advantages and disadvantages of extra length in a fly rod are important to understand . . .
Mending is a bit of a lost art in fly fishing, and I meet fewer and fewer people with much skill for it. Remember to start with slack. Then keep your mends small and crisp. Mend like you mean it, and be willing to make mistakes. Have fun out there . . .
The pickup is one of the most overlooked aspects of the casts. And by learning to shoot line on the pickup, the options for delivering our flies with precision and with subtle variation are wide open . . .
Accuracy. It’s an elementary casting principle, but it’s the hardest thing to deliver. Wild trout are unforgiving. So the errant cast that lands ten inches to the right of a shade line passes without interest. As river anglers, our task is a complicated one, because we must be accurate not only with the fly to the target, but also with the tippet. Wherever the leader lands, the fly follows. Accuracy holds a complexity that is not for the faint of heart. But here’s one tip that guarantees immediate improvement right away.