Today Chris Price checks back in from Southern Chile with a follow up to his “Pull, Don’t Push” advice from last week.
Tic Toc
When casting, we’re pulling not pushing, right?
As we’re false casting and getting ready to let it fly, we often have a tendency to give a little extra oomph into the last cast. Sometimes a little extra becomes a lot of extra which is bad.
This extra oomph turns into pushing or throwing which we don’t want to do. The forward push will overload the rod to a point where it will almost always snap the fly into the fly line, causing the fly to fall short or the line to crash.
Ask yourself, “Do I hear the fly line in the air or do I hear the rod whipping through the air on the forward cast?”
You hear this ‘whipping’ when you try to throw the line. This will usually create an arc instead of staying on the straight plane that we talked about earlier, thus opening up your nice tight loop that you had formed in the backcast. Now instead of the smooth turnover with a tight forward loop, you will have an open loop and most likely the fly will also fall short and the line will puddle.
Think of a clock when casting. A pendulum on a clock swings back and forth – tic toc, tic toc. The pendulum does not swing faster to one side than the other. It swings nice and smooth side to side with the same amount of force from right to left.
So imagine the rod to be the pendulum, pulling not pushing, concentrating on nice loops in the backcast and forward cast, concentrating on where you want to put the fly. Now on the last cast just pull it forward, following through and pointing your thumb and rod tip where you want the fly to land.
A fly rod is designed to load and fling or for better description, catapult the fly line. Stand up straight, don’t lean or reach. You probably paid a good price for your rod, so let the rod do the work for you – not your arm.
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