Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 29 March 2025
I seem to learn the same thing in fly casting many times. And I haven’t been at it for a long time and still relearning things. Like if my casting is off and I cannot figure out what’s going on it is very possible that my front and back targets are off. Maybe even none existing, that’s the worst. Trying to do a long carry out into the nothingness can be a recipe for fail.
The first time I experienced the importance of targets was the first time out fishing with a fly rod. It was in a small lake with a lot of trees around the lake. I wanted to fish so I tried my best and soon I saw that when I had trees behind me I could cast between my casting got better. That improvement were lost as soon as I saw how things got better and I started to look at the trees instead of between the trees.
Now I know a bit better, instead of looking at the trees and trying to cast between them find a target far behind the trees you want to cast between and focus on that target. Forget the trees that you want to avoid. If you forget them they seem to disappear, when you focus on them they will eat your fly. That is something that feels kind of familiar, like something many stories are built around. That the monster can only get you when you give it power by focusing on it.
In a classic Swedish movie, Snow Roller, they share a tip to avoid hurting yourself while skiing. On skiing vacation, first day skip the first day and skip the last run every day. There is some truth to be found there. When casting around trees it seems to be a surefire method to get stuck to do “one final back cast”. Even if the length of line isn’t changed it still finds a branch to get stuck in somehow.
The lake I started to fly fish in has a spot that is easily accessible, quite good for fishing also. The spot looks quite open and easy to cast in. But there is this one small tree that catches more casts than it looks like it should. One time when I was visiting the lake, standing in the afore mentioned spot, I got a strange feeling. I had made some casts that I wouldn’t get away with. Then I saw it, the small tree was lying on the ground. Someone probably had enough.
I got some good news for the opening of the seatrout season, at least for me. My boat will be ready before the opening. Giving me a lot of more options to fish in untouched spots.
Cheers, Rickard
Picture of the Day, sketch of what happens with the line when the back cast target doesn’t align with the front target.