Fly casting and Fly-fishing Dec. 26, 2001

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Date: December 21, 2002 at 13:57:34
From: ken, [pool-64-223-39-246.prov.east.verizon.net]
Subject: Fly casting and Fly-fishing Dec. 26, 2001

Fly-casting is a part of fly-fishing; not the converse statement which is - fly-fishing is a part of fly-casting. It is that simple. People who sell and promote and buy into the view that fly-casting is fly-fishing are invested for reasons of their own in that view. Fly-casting is an important part of fly-fishing as is every other part of the whole set of related fly-fishing skills. Still, fly-casting is not the definition under which fly-fishing is found. Good casting skills are fundamental and are extremely helpful to every fly-fisherman. To be a good caster is a good thing but it is not the same thing as being a good fly-fisherman. You can be a consistently successful fly fisherman and be an ordinary caster. That is not to say that if you develop better casting skills that you won’t catch more fish. You will. You also can be an expert caster and not be a good fisherman at all. If you are an expert caster who is not a consistent fisherman and then become an even better caster you will catch more fish but that won’t make you a consistantly good fisherman. Casting skills and fishing skills are not the same thing and to focus on casting skill alone will help you become a better caster but not necessarily a better fisherman in and of itself. There are times when a longer cast will help someone catch fish that they cannot reach and those times are frustrating and motivational to the extreme as fuel for someone to learn how to cast further. How often do those events happen in comparison to the times that the fish are within casting distance but are not caught for other reasons? Probably less than ten percent overall but they have the emotional impact of a bomb. When you can’t do something that someone else can do and they are benefiting from their skill and you are handicapped by your lack of ability in that area of expertise (casting)it feels bad.

I can cast a whole line consistently with a single backcast. So can a lot of fly-fisherman. But that is not a skill that I depend on to catch fish in most circumstances. It is not the skill that makes the best fly-fishermen I know into the best fly-fishermen I know, and none of those consistent fly-fishermen whom I have asked even put whole line casts on their list of critical fishing skills. Casting distance is something that is measurable, 80 feet is longer than 70 feet but it does not measure fishing skill and never will. It feels good to cast a long line but if that feeling becomes your focus of attention and the fish that are hard to catch through casting skill alone are ignored, then fly casting becomes a placebo substitute for the full scope of fly-fishing and fly-casting replaces fly-fishing as the term used to describe the fundamental premise of the pleasure of the sport. Casting a long line is not the definition of fly-fishing. It never was and never will be the determiner of who is a good fly-fisherman. Focus on the fish first and also develop casting skill. Keep learning about the fish and nature and keep working on the casting as casting, and the fishing and the casting will improve. If you think that the fishing skill is secondary to and develops from the casting skill, then catching fish consistantly will always remain a mystery and the answer to it is not found just a little further than your longest cast.

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