Ed Jaworowski's Functional Fly Casting, Video 1: Acceleration

EDITOR'S NOTE: Casting master Ed Jaworowski takes a deep dive into the fundamentals of fly casting in his five-part series “Functional Fly Casting,” which ran in each issue of Fly Fisherman in 2025. In the Feb-Mar issue, Ed examines the critical aspect of acceleration. Some people confuse “speed” with “acceleration.” The difference is all in the timing, and it happens in less than one second.

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Regardless of the waters we fish or the species we pursue, casting is the essential skill that defines fly fishing. Yet there is much misunderstanding and many misconceptions about how casting works.

A fly rod has only one innate power: When bent, it can straighten. The caster’s task, in the simplest terms, is to bend (load) the rod, then allow the rod to straighten. A rod does not bend backwards when we cast. Regardless of where the tip of the rod is at the start of a cast, it will never go back any farther. Rather, the hand applies force to the grip, moving it forward, while the line offers resistance to the tip’s movement, holding it back, which creates the bend.

It’s vital to understand that, since fishing conditions and situations change endlessly, there can be no rigid or fixed rules or instructions for casting. You cannot specify where to start, move, or stop your arm or rod, or the direction and distance to move them, before deciding on the result you want from the cast. You must take various factors into account, including the fly being cast, the desired direction and distance, wind, any obstructions—whether overhead or to the side or rear—and more. The way you stand, the direction you face, the starting and stopping points, and the length, speed, direction, plane, and angle of the casting stroke may all have to change from one cast to the next.

There’s an old adage in architecture: Form follows function. This is à propos to casting as well. What may be a correct move for one cast could be completely unsuitable for another. After taking all the factors into account, the stroke or form to use for any cast should be the last thing you decide upon, not the first.

Eliminate Slack

When teaching absolute beginners, we should be aware that the instructions we may give for a simple, straight “pickup/lay-down cast,” will not suit many fishing scenarios encountered as anglers progress in the sport. Even making a straight 40-foot cast—as opposed to a 30-foot cast—requires a change, regardless of how slight the variation. As in all sports, the question must always be: What must we change, why, and how? Driving, fading, drawing, chipping, or putting a golf ball, hitting or bunting a baseball, or serving or lobbing a tennis ball all require changes in the form or motions we use. No fixed, predetermined instructions can suit all the various requirements. So too, with casting. We do anglers a great disservice if we imply that there are absolute rules to follow.

To bend or load a fly rod (or any type of fishing rod) by moving the hands requires that there is tension or resistance on the rod tip to hold it back when you move the rod butt. Another way to express the concept is “there should be no slack in the line.” Even simpler: “First, get the end of the line moving.” If there is slack in the line there is not enough resistance to bend the rod. “Shock waves” and misshapen loops are among the most common problems that result from commencing the casting stroke when there is slack in the line.

There are a number of options for removing the slack. Making a roll cast can remove slack and straighten the line before you start your backcast. Or you can lower the rod and point it toward the line on the water, then strip in slack with your line hand. However, if you have a lot of slack in the line, stripping it all in might leave you with too little line to load the rod. In that case, you might swing the rod from side to side at a steady speed to create a wave motion until that sine wave or series of S-curves reaches the end of the line.

As soon as the end of the line and the fly are moving, instantly go into your backcast. The line doesn’t have to be straight, merely moving. You could also make a quick twirl with the tip of your rod and send a spiral running down the line, and commence your backcast when the end of the line and fly come off the water. The greater the length of line, the larger the spiral should be. This is a highly effective way to pick up and cast dry flies.

The same principle applies to the forward cast. There is little hope for an efficient forward cast if a large percentage of the caster’s effort is wasted in simply removing the slack created by a poor backcast. The useful length of the forward cast will then also be seriously compromised.

One Second

Assuming the slack is gone and you have the end of the line moving, the next vital aspect of the cast—the very essence of rod loading—is acceleration of the rod hand. It isn’t speed alone that loads a rod, but rather the constant increase in speed, getting continually faster and faster. This is the most important requirement for efficient casting. Once your hand starts moving it should steadily, but exponentially, increase in speed, then instantly stop (cease applying force) when you achieve the desired load.

It is the acceleration that loads the rod, but it’s the stop that allows the rod to straighten, release its stored energy, and unroll the line. Although the hand might still move a bit after the acceleration has ceased—for example when you’re making a reach cast by moving the rod to the right or left—that’s not part of the actual loading and unloading of the rod. Casting efficiency calls for using the least, not the greatest, effort you can apply to achieve the desired result. Tension impedes acceleration, compelling you to use more effort than necessary. So strive to have as little tension in the muscles as possible. Coaches in nearly all sports affirm this.

Instead of continual acceleration, many casters wrongly commence their cast with a rapid hand movement, believing it is all about speed. They then continue the stroke at a fast but constant speed, not unlike a car’s windshield wiper. That wiper arm makes an initial movement, then maintains a steady speed across the glass until it stops and reverses. It never changes speed during its travel, and a motion like that cannot produce a productive load in the rod. Simply moving your hand even faster and harder, like switching your car’s wipers to high speed, will not change that, and it will still produce wide, sweeping loops on the backcast and forward cast. Avoid that “windshield wiper” stroke, because when the rod straightens, it directs little energy into the line. Wide or misshapen loops lack speed and have limited potential for distance, for turning over large and heavy flies, and for coping with wind. The cause of this inefficiency is that fast but steady windshield wiper stroke.

For years I have filmed, analyzed, and timed casting strokes from the time the hand starts moving the rod until it stops applying any force. Regardless of the caster or the result, I have found that most backcasts and forward casts—whether short or long, sidearm or overhead, straight or curving—take less than one second, commonly just half a second. That’s the time frame in which you must execute that acceleration and stop, which load and unload the rod. This sounds incredible to many anglers, but driving a golf ball or hitting a baseball occurs much faster. Even though on two different casts the hand may move the same distance, in the same one second or less, variations of one or two tenths of a second involving the acceleration and stop can account for major differences in results, such as rod load, loop formation, speed, direction, and distance. It isn’t the time per se that is crucial, but what you do during that time.

The constant-speed windshield-wiper cast cannot develop significant load, while a cast that begins more slowly but accelerates exponentially from the start requires less effort. It can more than double its speed in the last tenth of a second. The feel of that final, fastest part of the stroke and the quick stop are what good casters often identify as the “power stroke.” But note that it is not a separate move or stroke because, like swinging a golf club, tennis racket, baseball bat, or throwing a punch, a cast comprises one continuous movement.

Incidentally, employing a haul, simultaneously pulling on the line with your other hand while your rod hand accelerates, also contributes to loading the rod. I strongly recommend that you employ hauls on virtually all casts, not just long casts. Make short strokes with short hauls for short casts, and longer strokes with longer hauls for longer casts.

Focus on refining your acceleration and instantly checking it. Developing a cast with an efficient acceleration and stop requires practice, practice, practice, but it will be more than worth the effort. It will eliminate numerous problems, improve all your casts, and enable you to make a variety of otherwise impossible casts that unroll smoothly and tightly, and go farther, faster when called for. I’ll explore other aspects of the casting stroke in subsequent articles.

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Ed Jaworowski is the author of Perfecting the Cast: Adapting Casting Principles for Any Fly-Fishing Situation (Stackpole Books, 2021) and coauthor of Pop Fleyes: Bob Popovics’s Approach to Saltwater Fly Design (Stackpole Books, 2014).