Tracy&James | Sunday, 21 February 2021
James and I are in lockdown for at least another three weeks, so we still can’t go fishing, though we can go casting. The new wiggle cast competition should be fun to practice. We thought it would be nice for those who aren’t necessarily into distance casting to have a go. I know it’s not really a fishing cast as you would never do so many wiggles when river fishing, though it may help with the control needed to make presentation casts. So far I’ve found this new competition enjoyable and practiced it with and without hauling. Non-hauled casting is something I practice regularly to improve my distance casting as well.
For the wiggle cast, I found that keeping the forward cast straight over the line was easier without using my hauling arm. This was to ensure that the wiggles landed and cut the tape rather than missed to the side. However hauling may provide the extra line speed to cast further and get more wiggles in, so it’s an interesting balance. So is the power used to do the stop and then wiggle, if you apply too much, it can pull the wiggles out.
As I said, this isn’t something I would normally do when fishing, in fact on rivers, I typically do reach mends for probably 90 percent of the time. If you are going to practice any cast for river fishing then that one must be the most versatile for any situation. Hopefully next month I might be able to actually practice it whilst fishing. At the moment due to the amount of rain we’re having, the local rivers have generally been unfishable, so cross fingers that when restrictions are loosened, the weather improves.
We’ve had a few ‘wiggle’ entries already, though not from James as yet. Since I set the competition off with my entry the weather hasn’t been conducive to presentation casting. In fact, it hasn’t really been that good for distance casting either as even though it’s been windy, it’s been swirly resulting in the line landing in some interesting formations and often nowhere near the tape. The forecast is for some calmer days, so I intend to do some more ‘wiggling’ soon and James will add his entry in due course. The current leader is Peter Morse with an impressive 20 wiggles (counting the number of times the fly line crosses the line or tape on the ground as described by James last week), so if you fancy a try, send us your entry.
Cheers, Tracy