Casting Principles
Whether you are getting ready to go on that once in a lifetime trip or just want to fish one of your stock ponds, learning to cast properly will improve your fly fishing experience. The basic pick up and lay down cast has five elements or parts, but before we get started a bit of advice. Casting is all about timing and using the rod to do the work. Just adding more power to the cast almost always leads to a casting fault.
- You start with the Pickup where the goal is to get the flyline moving and starting to clear of the water. It is important to start with the rod tip at the water and with no slack in the system. In a fishing situation this is done with some finesse so that you don't 'rip' the line off the water and put down every fish within casting distance. - Second is the Backcast, an accelerating stroke that loads the rod moving away from the target along with a firm stop. The stop is one of the key elements. Unlike other sports that we are all familiar with we aren't looking for a follow through but rather a very firm stop. - Third we have the Pause that allows the loop to unroll to the rear. The length of the pause is proportional to the amount of line outside the rod tip and the speed of your cast. The more line we have out past the rod tip the longer it takes to fully straighten. - Fourth is the 'Forwardcast' that accelerates the rod toward your target, again with that firm stop. - Fifth and last is the Presentation where, after the firm stop, the rod tip follows the line to the water with your rod for a stillwater cast or, if required, you execute a reach cast to put a mend in the line if you are on moving water.On both the Backcast and 'Forwardcast' the goal is to ensure that the rod tip travels in a straight line path in both the horizontal and vertical planes. An interesting three dimensional issue when you consider that, to maintain a straight line path of the rod tip, the rod needs to be bent (or loaded) differently to shorten its apparent length between the pivot point and the rod tip based on the amount of line outside the rod tip.
I like the graphic below to try to think through this issue. The graphic depicts the straight line rod tip path for three different casting strokes, lengthened appropriately to balance different lengths of fly line outside the rod tip.
This graphic appeared in an article for Sexy Loops entitled "Making Adjustments on the Fly".
