Ed Jaworowski's Functional Fly Casting, Video 5: Real-Life Casting

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. This is the final video. 

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Casting is a means to an end. It’s really about fishing. Fixed instructions about starting and stopping points, casting planes, directions, stroke lengths, and rod paths may sometimes be good advice, but they can also make some casts difficult or even impossible to make when you’re faced with certain real-life fishing challenges.

In my previous videos in this series, I’ve discussed important aspects of acceleration, hand/rod rotation, leverage involving arm and body, and critical rod/line angles. Although space limits the number of situations and the kinds of casts I can address, and the detail I can include, I’ll provide here a few examples that illustrate how to adapt those physical principles to the requirements of various situations you’ll encounter on the water. Each of these, and a dozen others, could easily warrant a full article or a chapter in a book.

Distance

Many fishing situations call for very long casts, surf fishing being a classic example. The first requirement for a longer cast is greater line speed, but that doesn’t mean you have to work harder. It does mean the rod must have a greater load—a deeper bend—in order to launch the line with more energy. That is most efficiently achieved by starting the cast with a very wide critical angle (the angle between the rod tip and the line), up to 180 degrees.

This allows acceleration over a longer distance before instantly ceasing all force on the rod grip. Casting for distance may also call for making the forward cast at an upward angle. Think of how you would throw a ball or shoot an arrow a long way. It must be directed upward for maximum distance.

In order to set up for this forward cast, a high backcast is the last thing you want. Take the rod back off the vertical and as far to the rear as conditions allow. The forward cast involves starting from a low rod position in the rear, turning your body, slightly shifting your weight forward, and making the forward cast in a rising trajectory.

Roll Casts

A roll cast is really just a forward cast with a modified backcast. Roll casts are not only for when obstacles to the rear preclude making regular backcasts. They may also be used to remove slack and get the end of the line moving before you make a backcast or raise a sinking line to the surface.

Some people recommend taking the rod back to a fixed point, such as 11 o’clock, then “chopping down” on the forward cast. This commonly results in a huge loop and a splashy presentation that piles up close by. Using “more power” is often prescribed as the remedy, but that is poor advice, since insufficient power was not the cause of the problem.

Remember that the line must unroll in the direction the tip was traveling when it straightened, so that downward chopping stroke, when you want the line to go forward, is at fault. By simply taking the rod back farther and making a long stroke straight ahead, you can make an easier and more efficient roll cast. Like any other forward cast, a good roll cast will straighten above the water with a remarkably tight loop.

When roll casting long lengths of line, don’t drag the line and fly back through the water. A long line resting on the water when you make the stroke means that much of your effort will be wasted simply breaking the line free from the surface tension. Instead, raise your rod tip—lifting the entire line gently from the water—flip a slightly longer D-loop behind you, and let it drop to the surface so that the end of the line is alongside or slightly behind you, but never longer than about a rod length in front of you. Start forward the instant the final two or three feet of line just touches the water.

Casting Curves

Curve casts are not trick casts. They have practical applications for a variety of fishing situations. I have taken trout, bass, pike, striped bass, bluefish, and bonefish by using curve casts in a wide range of fishing situations.

You can execute curve casts overhead or sidearm, unrolling the line around a stump, tree, bush, rock, or lily pad. You can also cast toward shore, but instead of retrieving your fly away from the bank or jetty, turn the last several feet of the line and leader parallel to the shore so that your fly swims right to left, or left to right, on the retrieve. Many trout stream situations involving tricky currents can be solved with creative curve casts.

To make a curve cast, finish your forward stroke with your hand turning sharply at the instant you stop. The turn of the hand, along with slightly more load, will cause the rod tip, then the line, to continue into a curve, taking the leader and fly with it. And it doesn’t take a lot of practice to teach yourself to curve in the opposite direction by casting with what is normally your line hand.

Always keep in mind that whatever the hand does at the end of the casting stroke, the rod tip and the line will mimic. To make a gentle curve, at the end of an overhead stroke, move your hand in a curving path to the right or left. When you stop your stroke, the line will continue in that path and make a gentle curve to the right or left to get around brush or rocks. For really sharp turns, up to a sharp 90 degrees, at the last fraction of a second before stopping, turn your hand sharply to the right or left. Imagine turning a light bulb in an overhead socket with a very short, quick move—screwing it in to go left, unscrewing it to go right—and you will have the idea. In so doing, you put a slight torque or twist into the rod shaft while it’s still bent, and when the rod straightens the last thing it does is to straighten itself.

Improved Steeple Cast

Sometimes, when bushes or other obstacles to the rear prevent a normal backcast, even a roll cast might be difficult to execute. One well-known solution is a steeple cast, a very high, climbing backcast to get above the obstacle. There is a limit to the angle and height a typical steeple cast can travel. However, you can extend this cast’s usefulness when faced with very high obstacles, even a cliff face, to the rear.

With the rod tip low near the water, turn your hand over before starting, with your elbow facing up so that the reel is on top, thumb on the bottom, and you can direct the rod tip nearly straight up. As the line is about to straighten overhead, quickly drop your arm down a bit, turn your hand so that the thumb is now behind the rod, and stroke forward. While this maneuver is limited to short casts, in tight or cramped quarters it can solve a problem posed by an otherwise impossible situation.

Inverted Loop

To place your fly under bushes, low-hanging branches, or other obstacles, you might be able use a sidearm cast, or perhaps a “grasshopper” or skip cast, a bit like skipping a stone across the water. An upside-down cast, often called an inverted loop or pendulum cast, can be another option. The unrolling loop of line is turned completely upside down—what is normally the top leg of the unrolling line is below the standing or bottom leg. This allows you to unroll the line and fly just a foot or so above the water.  

To turn the loop upside down on your forward stroke, move your hand in a concave path, dropping your hand down and back up as you come forward. It’s a bit like an underhand sling that bass fishermen use to toss a jig or spinnerbait under a dock.

I hope these few examples will at least cause you to question some common instructions, and encourage you to think creatively about adapting the physical principles of casting in countless ways when you encounter challenging fishing conditions. Remember, casting form comes last. Don’t assume that casting is always a matter of following dictated rules. First recognize the requirements needed to produce the results you need. Then use greater or lesser acceleration, longer or shorter arm and rod leverage, and a wider or narrower critical angle. And consider the direction the rod tip must be traveling when it straightens as required for each situation. If you alter your thinking—and practice!—you can meet the challenges, become a much more versatile and proficient caster, and a more successful angler. It’s not about a different way of casting, rather a different way of thinking about casting.

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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).