Basic Casting

Casting a spinning rod and casting a fly rod and line share one major similarity When the rod stops, the lure continues along the same trajectory. Everything else is different. In conventional fishing, you cast the lure and the line follows. In fly fishing, you cast the line and the lure (or fly) follows, allowing you to fish with floating dry flies that are nearly weightless.

Your first objectives in fly casting should be to learn to bend the rod (called loading the rod), and stroking the rod correctly.

Too many beginners try to cast the line by moving their arm in exaggerated windshield-wiper movements and they never really load the rod.

Try not to move your arm or wrist like a windshield-wiper blade. Instead, your forward stroke should be analogous to hammering a nail into a wall The rod grip is your hammer. It is a short, curved stroke that accelerates quickly to the target and then stops suddenly. The acceleration loads (bends) the rod, and the rod “unloads” after the sudden stop, propelling the line forward.

The “apple and the stick” analogy is another common teaching tool. Imagine spearing an apple on the end of a limber willow stick. Your goal is to hurl the apple as far as you can. If you start too quickly, the apple will fall to the ground behind you. You must start slowly, accelerate smoothly through the stroke and then stop abruptly to throw the apple.

If you decelerate smoothly at the end of the stroke, the apple may actually stay on the stick—it is the sudden stop that causes the apple to fly, and so it is with casting a fly line.

These are good analogies but fly casting is actually much more complicated than hammering a nail or throwing an apple, because fly casting is not just a forward motion. There is a mirror-image cast to the rear (backcast) for every forward cast. If your backcast is faulty, you will also struggle with your forward cast.

For this reason, it’s helpful to turn your head and watch your backcast. This is not only for beginners; this is good advice even for experts looking to hone an already excellent casting stroke. You can also videotape your casting as you practice so you can see what’s going on behind you.

Casting Principles

The old way (and the wrong way) to teach fly casting is to have a beginner move his arm like the arm of a metronome back and forth from the 10 o’clock position to the 2 o’clock position. This was quaint in the movie and book A River Runs Through It, but in real-life situations, your arm will need to move along different paths to deal with different situations.

Clock positions are not as important in fly casting as the timing and application of power to and from those positions. To be a good caster, you need to understand the physics behind casting, or the basic principles of fly casting, so you can make whatever cast you require into the wind, with high bushes behind you, under an overhanging branch, or whatever.

Fly Fisherman editor-at-large Lefty Kreh is one of the world’s most accomplished casting instructors. He has taught thousands of people how to cast, produced fly casting DVDs, written a host of magazine articles, and given casting demonstrations around the globe. His recent book Casting with Lefty Kreh (Stackpole Books, 2008) is an authoritative reference that outlines four basic principles and then expands on those principles in the following 400+ pages.