The Hump Mend, Bucket Cast, and Rat’s Nest Cast are all in fact the same thing. Jason Borger named it the Hump Mend, Mac Brown the Bucket Cast and Carlos Azpilicueta the Rat’s Nest.
Carlos has an excellent descriptive page here: http://www.sexyloops.com/carlos/ratsnest.shtml
One thing I didn’t mention in the video is that it’s also an excellent method of throwing out slack line when fishing at long distance on big rivers. You will need either a long belly WF line or a DT for this to be successful. Indeed this is my main use for this cast, finding it to be extremely useful under these situations.
Many casters find this cast to be rather difficult to learn at first. The first problem being that the Mend doesn’t collapse the line into a pile, but instead the tension from the unrolling loop pulls the Mend straight. There are two solutions to this: 1) make the initial cast slower and 2) for the mend portion, after raising the rod, try to “push the fly leg with the rod tip” – obviously you can’t push string, but it reduces tension in the rod leg of the loop.
TIP: the Hump Mend is not a fast movement – give yourself time!
The second problem that can occur is that instead of the loop unrolling straight, the line end reverses back upon itself forming a Snap Cast variation. One of the casts in the video shows this error (intentionally!). This is caused by using too much force during the forward portion of the mend, which in turn forces the fly line to reverse itself. The solution here is to use less force and attempt to “push/shunt the line” down along the rod leg.
For a bit of fun… As a casting game we’ve played with the Hump Mend using three rings. One in which to place the fly and the other two for positioning Hump Mends in each. It’s not particularly useful but worth practising if you know there is a bucket of beer to be won!
Cheers, Paul
Got a question? Try asking here on the Board: http://www.sexyloops.co.uk/theboard/viewforum.php?f=72
Or drop me an email: paul@sexyloops.com