Viking Lars | Saturday, 11 May 2024
There are many aspects to practicing your casting and of course, different focus points depending on what type of casting you’re practicing. In the end, they can all be combined. Practicing distance casting involves both carry and shoot. As long a carry as possible and as long a shoot as possible. Timing, precision, presentation, loop control and much, much more. And the better you can combine all these, the better the fly caster you become.
I’ve been getting ready for the salmon season. That involves brushing off the long rods and the casting that comes with them. Primarily spey casting, but also overhead casting. In spey casting, it’s also good to be precise, be able to present your fly and line in different ways, cast far, control the loops etc.
Spey casting does differ from overhead casting in one particular way - namely the need for anchoring the line. The anchor needs to be sufficient to prevent kick back and “light” enough to stick as little as possible. Just as in nearly all fishing with sinking lines, a long leader is counter productive - in spey casting as well. On floating lines I use long leaders. Something as long as 17’. That first of all gives good, light presentations, provide a noticeable stabilisation of the fly leg in flight and provide a perfect and sufficient anchor that prevents kick back and peels off easily with minimal spray.
A 4-6’ leader on a fast sinking shooting head is far from enough to prevent kick back. This is where different practice comes in. I focus on anchoring only the leader on floating lines, which doesn’t have to be 17’, but I don’t go shorter than 12’. A good, long, constant incline on the D-loop setup is the best way to achieve this. A sinking line needs a different timing, because anchoring a bit of the line together with the short leader is needed. Long constant incline is still the way to go, but it’s a different lift and timing. One thing is practicing this on the lake. I get on my knees, even my butt sometimes, to mimic deep and deeper wading and that goes a long way. But running water is a whole different beast and requires a different, more deliberate lift (in lack of a better word). This needs to be practised on all the relevant types of spey cast. If you look closely at my video from last week, I’m not spot on on my snake rolls, but I will be. Hopefully well before the season ends.
In teaching and practicing, we often focus on placing the anchor in the optimal place - approximately one rod length away. We also focus on turning the feet towards to new casting direction, which is good. But certainly not always possible in the river. You might be wading in slippery rocks and have to make do with whatever foot hold you can find and that might not place both feet comfortably in the right direction.
Take a look at today’s PoD. I took this snap shot on the Dee. The wading was horrible and the two rocks in front of me dictated where I could place my leader. Above, between or below. Any one of these were most of the time not a rod length away from me. I have a firm base in my double hand cast, but being able to precisely place the leader in any of these three positions would have helped greatly. I managed, but had to use 2-3 attempts for each position.
That will get a little attention in the coming weeks of both fishing and practice. The next big river has fairly bad wading and big rocks as well. I’ll be fishing sinking lines and one more thing to notice about them is that they fly faster. Making anchor placement a little harder.
I’ll probably be fishing 15’ rods, maybe a 14’, so I’ll use them for the practice to dial in on them as well.
Practice anchor placement in less that optimal places. That helps on the river.
Have a great weekend!
Lars