Is Your Casting Technique Creeping You Out?

CREEPED OUT

Is your casting technique creeping you out?

So I had a great weekend up at Exmouth. Friday it blew hard all day and made fly fishing near impossible and, worse, it seemed to exacerbate the creep http://www.sexyloops.com/flycasting/definitions/ problem I’ve been working on for months. The quartering 25 knot tailwind coming onto my right shoulder made me want to rush the forward stroke before the backcast straightened. I could feel myself ‘shocking’ the 10wt Xi2 time and time again on the forward stroke. My loops were clearly too wide, but even when I watched it, the backcast would lose steam in that wind and I’d start the forward throw too soon to keep the line and heavy clouser out of the water behind me. Of course, that just made it worse. Turning my body into the wind and using a backhand stroke on the forward throw helped, but then I wouldn’t get as much distance as I did with my creepy forehand stroke. The tendonitis in my right elbow was killing me by the end of the day. But, hey, who said saltwater fly was supposed to be easy?

Anyway, even with all that going on, half the time the line was still going out better than it used to. The wind dropped to about 15 knots in the late afternoon and I found I was getting along pretty well, putting a good bend into the rod and making nice loops to seventy or eighty feet or so – not bad when up to your belly in water with no stripping basket, I said to myself. I was consciously drifting http://www.sexyloops.com/flycasting/definitions/ on the rearward stroke, relaxing my grip, and getting my haul timing and butt rotation sorted somewhat. Surprisingly, the rearward drift seemed to help the tennis elbow that I’ve had since May. I mean it actually felt better after a few good casts.

By next day, the wind had dropped to a mild breeze and the flats were in good shape – and so was my casting. This just made all the difference to enjoying the day. On my last saltwater trip http://www.sexyloops.co.uk/cgi-bin/theboard_07/ikonboard.cgi? act=ST;f=6;t=5573;st=60 the rod had seemed too stiff and heavy, although I stuck with it for four weeks. Now it was flexing like a proper fly rod and actually felt sweet, if you can imagine a sweet 10wt saltwater rig firing a 1/0 clouser. Now I was really fishing, and when I found the fish things came together. Big schools of Silver Drummer http://www.fishsa.com/sldrummer.php were cruising the coral platforms in shallow water. These fish were new to me and I hadn’t heard anything about fly fishing for them, but let me tell you, they are a great fly rod quarry. Real punchers that don’t quit.

A thumping Northern Silver Drummer goes back unfazed.

Casting well out in the park is one thing, but in actual fishing situations you don’t even want to have to think about it. I still have plenty of work to do on my casting, but I think I’m finally getting that creep under control.