My casting experience
I have played with many lines on many rods. Fly fishing for me started with a six weight rod and floating line as a birthday present to fish freshwater ponds for trout. I taught myself to cast through trial and error and by reading as many books and online articles as I could on the subject. All the stuff I read recommended the line labeled for the rod and anything else was to make up for bad technique. I had never taken a class and had only remembered watching a guy cast a fly rod at a fishing show as a kid as to the basic idea of how things worked.
“You must keep your wrist rigid.” So, I kept my wrist rigid and would flail away. I practiced and practiced on the water and off. I didn’t catch many trout but I did start to catch sunfish and largemouths, which I kind of preferred anyway. I didn’t start to cast decent distance until I started experimenting away from the excepted norm. A miscue at the end of a cast, where I flipped my wrist, would send the line shooting out. So I started flicking my wrist just before I released each cast. I also started keeping my elbow close to my body because it was one less variable to worry about. Later I found out this was the old style of casting, I guess it really works. I learned how to double haul and load the rod. I could cast small flies fast and far but would have a hard time with the bigger ones. I really liked the bigger flies because I had seriously started to target largemouth and smallmouth bass.
At the time distance was important to me because I would fish with my Dad and friends who where all using spinning gear and didn’t need to or want to get close to the good structure. In the back of the canoe I would be casting my brains out and still fall short.
“You need to fish deep, besides sinking lines let you throw farther.” So I got myself a sinking line. It did cast faster than the floater but not as nice. I did get quite good at whipping up some line speed and dredging some fish out from the depths while I was in my canoe fishing still waters. But I was still having distance issues with larger flies.
“It must have been time for a bigger, faster, more expensive rod.” So I went out and bought one, four hundred bucks for a setup is a lot to a kid in college. I got an eight weight rod with the recommended eight weight line. So I put my six weight away. I could throw the big deer-hair bugs a bit farther but I was still not happy with performance. Fifty to sixty feet was about my max distance double hauling and false casting numerous times per cast. The wind resistant bugs didn’t allow much line speed no matter how hard I tried.
The saltwater bug hit. If I could catch fish in freshwater with a fly rod then I could easily fish for those big mean dumb salties. Besides I had a rod that someone gave me as a gift long before I had ever fly fished, and it was a “9/10 weight the absolute correct size to use” according to the literature. So reading as much as I could I got a nine weight floating line, after all “you can cast farther with the lighter line, because the rod didn’t load until you got more line out the tip”. I got myself accustomed to using it. Again I could throw smaller flies fast and far but with the puffy ones, not so well. I tried using my eight weight rod in the salt with the same flies; big, heavy, long shank, stainless steel hooks; “recommended ones”. It was horrible, the rod was too small and besides what if I actually hook a big fish, “what if”. I jumped on the bandwagon when anyone ever asked about what rod they needed for the salt, it had to be a nine foot nine weight. “So you can cast really far and cover a lot of water”. That year I didn’t catch many fish, even though I fished every day. I also sliced up my fingers so bad they bled every time I bent them.
“It must be my line”. Again I read all the important info which indicated I must use an intermediate line. “They are great; they let you fish under the waves but sink slow enough so you can still use poppers.” Yeah, so I bought one and brought it to a jetty. Twenty minutes after my first cast the first twenty feet of the head of my fly line is gone. It got swept into the rocks by a big wave and it broke off when I tried to pull it out. The whole time I was using it I could see my fly wasn’t even deeper than a couple feet. It was still deep enough that I couldn’t pull the line up out of the water when the wave came by and washed it into the stinky abyss of a Rhode Island jetty. So because it was the line to use I went and bought another one. Come to find out the damn thing sinks to slow to fish deep but sinks to fast to use poppers on the top too.
“No fish” I must be doing something wrong. So I came to a Tuesday night after emailing Ken a question about clam worms and corkies. “Nice rod kid but it needs more weight” was what I kept hearing from everyone there. And “Stop false casting so much, you can’t catch fish unless your flies are in the water”. “Floaters are more versatile”. All things that the modern saltwater literature stated were wrong. So my journey began testing rods with lines. I switched back over to the floater, which I preferred to cast anyway. It was hard for me to get over the label shock, so I started small with just a weight or two over the label.
I started to play with multiple flies which I could not handle before with lots of false casts and laser tight loops. I started using heavier and heavier lines on my rods. My lighter rods came out for more work. The heavy lines didn’t feel so heavy any more. My casts didn’t have to be so fast and hard any more. I could use the mass of the line, not its speed to pull the flies through the air. I wasn’t as tired as I was before. My arm didn’t throb and ache like it did before. I was now able to shoot those early deer-hair flies, which gave me so much trouble before on an eight weight, as far as I wanted with my original six weight rod using an eleven weight line.
I learned the importance of line mass. How it works while casting a line. How it works in loading a rod. How it works in relation to wind. How it works in relation to flies. How it works in relation to current. I learned how to mend and use the flex from the rod to pick up more line off the water and to actually shoot line into a drift. I enjoy using double taper lines and lines with long heads because they are good fishing lines. Now I can spey cast and mend long lines with the same rods I started off with.
My rods decreased in heaviness so I could still use the lighter lines but still be able to load the rods. My six and three weight rods see more and more work. I fished less and watched more. I started using a system of observation and technique to catch fish, instead of just waving a tool and covering water. I started stalking and selectively targeting individual fish. Fishing became fun again. I can still false cast and double haul. My technique is as good as it ever was if not better. I can still throw light lines far but now I can fish my flies far.
My experience has led me away from mainstream casting and fishing thought. I have learned many expensive lessons by doing what is considered “the norm”. I have wasted a lot of money and energy doing what was recommended. Now I have fun. I don’t fly fish because it is harder or more challenging like I used too. It is no longer work like it used to be. I am no longer miserable after flogging away all day. I do it and enjoy it because it is an effective method and tool to present an offering to a fish in countless ways. I do what works whether or not it is accepted. I experiment and I play. I try what is supposed to work and I try what isn’t. In other words just go have some FUN!!!!!!
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