Kalyn Hoggard | Monday, 6 October 2025
I promised Rickard I would return to this topic at my earliest convenience. It turns out Rickard was surprised to discover that many people think that accuracy and distance fly casting are distinctly different things. People might even put you into one or the other category as a fly fisher. We all must understand that the ability to cast distance comes at a great cost. You must learn to cast a rod straight to and straight away from your target while also being able to maintain control over the loop you are forming. The better you are at those things the more potential you have to cast a fly “far.”
(With a Morpheus voice)
What if I were to tell you that casting accurately required the same skills necessary to cast long distances?
There are some trout bums out there that would absolutely explode if they were to uncover this sacred truth, but it is what it is.
I hear this sort of thing all the time: “I don’t need to learn how to haul. I just fish trout creeks.” “Accuracy is more important than distance when you are fishing. How can you set the hook from that far away?” “I’m more of an accuracy guy.”
I even meet people that are looking for casting lessons (at an event or show or whatever), and they balk at the idea of me giving them a lesson. “I’m not a distance caster,” they say as they look around me for another instructor that is more suitable. Well guys… I’m not a distance caster either. I am a fly fisher that will take good shots at fish out to 100 feet. I’ve got a plan to increase that distance while fishing from the beach, but that is for another time. I am also a fly fisher that will not stop perfecting my accuracy until I no longer need flies. I hope to one day be able to hook whichever bug is hatching while it is in the air and delicately deliver it to rising trout. Don’t worry. If I do get this figured out, then I won’t call it fly fishing. I’ll call it bugging and bait fishing for trout. Sound fair?
I prefer not to separate casting into a bunch of different categories if I don’t have to.
I look at fly casting and fishing this way:
As you develop your abilities as a fly person, you develop different skills that allow you to have a tactical advantage against your quarry in your fly fishing endeavors. Some fish are spooky and require stealth, distance, and accuracy in your casting to have a chance at em. The weather and the environment within which your quarry lives may add variables that require honing specific skills to be successful. If you cannot land your fly in a location sufficient to catch the fish you are after, then you are not going to be catching that fish. (Unless you have an exceptional guide)
At a fundamental level I think that as a fly fisher one ought to be trying to hone their casting skills so that they have a better chance of catching the fish they are typically after. I’m so industrious that I want to develop my casting ability to the point that I can try for fish I never could have before. So, my first response to the debate is…
You should be trying to cast farther and more accurately all the time so that you will have the ability to catch more fish.
This would imply that neither accuracy nor distance is more important than the other. It isn’t as if you are going to look at a trophy fish barely outside of your range, and declare aloud, “I am not a distance caster! I shall not cast to that fish!”
I might know a guy or two that seem like they would rather back up a little bit to take a cast at a fish. “I declare that tarpon is too close to me for me to cast. Pole man back us up!” But you know us distance casters…
I try to leave mechanics to the old guys when I can get away with it, but there is another point to be made about this comment that really isn’t a debate: accuracy and distance casting can be simplified into loop control. The degree to which you have loop control with a certain line and rod determines how accurately and how far you can cast a fly with that rig. This might imply that there isn’t an easy distinction between accuracy and distance casting without breaking things down into specific body movements sufficient to carry out specific feats, and so on at the micro level.
I would be willing to give it to the accuracy folks if we defined what it meant to be accurate in a very specific way. (But it is not what they mean by accuracy… So quit cheering) While one is controlling a loop to a high degree, one might decide to make the fly stop for the briefest of moments directly above a target to determine the flies distance from said target, then one hopefully makes the adjustments necessary and lands the fly directly (where they aimed) into a floating hoop to the sounds of cheers and an announcer yelling, “PERFECT SCORE!” This is a type of fly-casting accuracy where people use the end of their fly line or their fly to line up their shot while false casting before they take it.
There’s another kind of accuracy. A lot of those fishy people develop this kind of capability if they are serious about catching fish for any extended period. The ability to know where your fly is and how to get it where you want it to be in one shot is accuracy in my mind. This is a boots on the ground skill that requires a lot of practice and experience on the water, but it is a thing. There are even competitive casters that use this skill, rather than hovering, when casting in competition. “Making a fishing cast to hoops.” There is a lot involved with one to being able to take the fly off the water in one place and accurately deliver it on the water to another place all in one or maybe two motions depending on the situation. You need to have feel, timing, the right amount of straight over that way pickup into a back over there but underneath the branch delivery… BANG kind of accuracy.
I’m not sure if this type of capability can be attributed more to physical feat or mental capacity, but if you will give me that this idea of ultimate control over the line is accuracy, then I might say its more important, but it’ll make you cast farther too.