Casting Tip - Applied Power - Too Much, Too Soon

I just started helping a local high school teach their students the art of fly casting. Many casting errors are traced to these two main causes, breaking the wrist and incorrectly applied power at the pickup of the line off the water and in this case the grass.

We’ll concentrate on the second problem here. Many anglers start their cast by picking up the line with their rod parallel to the water and then applying too much power, with too much slack line on the water. This creates an extremely large loop and will not load the rod properly. The angler spends the rest of the cast sequence trying to tighten up the loop. Bad start equals bad delivery in most cases.

The cure of this malady is to begin the cast by stripping in excess line, and then smoothly lifting the rod tip to 10:00, not 1:00. This sets the rod up for a short, quick power stroke.

Try this next time you're on the water and you'll see a difference.