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Saltwater Casts
Are Never “False”
“Another Elmer Fudd,” I thought, as “Joe” whipped the fly rod back-and-forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth until the school of bonito vanished as the olive-and-white lead-eye fly finally hit the water.
“This could be another loooong day.” It was another example of what I’ve dubbed “The Warner Brothers School of Fly Casting.”
I have absolute no proof to back up that contention, but I truly believe that sometime back in the 1940s or ‘50s Warner MUST have come out with a cartoon of Elmer Fudd standing in a river allegedly “fly fishing” while snapping his wrist over and over and over.
THAT, I tell my students and guide-trip clients, is Fly Swatting. And it’s without a doubt the biggest problem fly anglers have when attempting to transition from “Up North” dry fly casting to saltwater streamer fishing.
Fish down here in the salt—from redfish and snook cruising along mangrove shorelines to tarpon quietly slicing through the Gulf of Mexico—are “movers.” They use their fins and keep swimming, unlike a brown trout that hunkers down next to a logjam in the Manistee River, or a rainbow hiding in the slick behind a boulder in the Madison.
What does that mean to you, the angler? Shoot ‘em fast or you won’t hit them at all.
Fly Casting in salt water simply involves flicking 30 feet of fly line backwards, hesitating less than two seconds, and flicking the line forward.
BANG! That fast a fly angler has covered nearly 50 feet of water.
Remember, there’s 30 feet of measured fly line (I paint the line with a MagicMarker) hanging outside the top guide, plus a ten-foot leader and approximately eight feet of “rod overhang” off the side of my Hewes Redfisher. Add ‘em up and it comes to 48 feet.
Wanna cast further than that? OK, this time strip another twenty feet of “running line” off the reel and let it lay unencumbered and untangled at your feet.
Now do the same thing as before, only this time let the running line flow through a circle created by the thumb and forefinger of your line hand when you finish the forward stroke of your first-and-only cast.
TA-DAAAH!
You just tossed fifty feet of fly line, which means the fly will land approximately 68 feet from where you’re standing. And if you can’t catch something salty at that distance then give it up and learn to play the banjo.
Wanna cast even further than THAT? OK, instead of twenty feet, strip forty feet of running line off the reel.
Repeat Step Two (which involved shooting twenty feet of line) but this time don’t let the line fall to the water.
Instead, pinch the line and make another backcast. Come forward a second time and shoot the remaining line.
TA-DAAAH!
You just cast seventy feet of fly line, which means the fly will land nearly 90 feet from where you’re standing.
All with just TWO—count ‘em TWO—backcasts.
And that means nearly every fish that swims down here is within range and possibly will be caught if the cast is accurate and the fly is right.
Go outside, shovel off the sidewalk and give it a try. Then send me an email to set up some days when you can fly down here and do it for real. I even know where there are some tarpon hanging out right now! |
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