The Troutbitten Podcast: Why It Always Comes Down to Fly Casting and What Matters Most — S3, Ep6

(From April 30, 2022) This episode is about fly casting — why it matters more than anything, and how we can improve our accuracy and control over the system with just a few key adjustments.

All fly fishing styles require good casting skills. My friends and I fish a Mono Rig for most underwater presentations. But this tight line approach for nymphs and streamers falls apart without the ability to cast and manage a long leader, through the air, exactly like a fly line. I say it all the time about tight line and euro nymphing — it’s casting, not lobbing — at least, it should be. Lobbing can get things done for a while, but to get anywhere beyond the basics, or even to get under the bankside tree limbs, we need good casting form. So we build loops with a great casting stroke, and then place not just the fly where we want it, but the tippet and leader in the best position too. Ironically, it takes refined fly casting skill to cast a Mono Rig.

All of us here fish long leaders and short ones. We choose a powerful Mono Rig for pushing nymphs and streamers around, and we cast dry flies with a fly line too. We fish a pure tight line with a single nymph, we fish dry dropper styles, yarn indys with short leaders and fly line, and streamers with sinking lines sometimes.

All of it, every bit of it, requires the same casting fundamentals and the ability to control lengths of line in the air. And we must build casting loops with speed for the line to go anywhere.

It’s fly fishing. So it starts with fly casting.

We break down some of our best tips for fly casting that apply to beginners and advanced anglers alike. We go through the essentials and some advanced ideas that apply to all fly casting styles, from dry flies to nymphs to streamers.

We Cover the Following

Correcting casting mistakes in the drift
Cradling the rod, and finding the balance point
Speed. short, crisp motions and clean stops
Turnover
Limit false casting, but use it for purpose
Oval in the rod tip travel
The casting V (10 and 2)
Distance discipline
Don’t reach
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Fish hard, friends.
Dom

[Music] this is the trout bitten podcast trout bitten trout bitten trout bitten trout bitten trout bitten yeah trout bitten trout bitten it’s about trout wild trout this is trout [Music] B this is the trout Pitt podcast thank you for tuning in I’m Dominic swosy the owner of trout Pitt and the author of trout pit.com tonight’s episode is about fly casting and why it matters more than anything else and how we can improve our accuracy and control over the whole system with just a few key adjustments casting these lengths of line through the air is the fundamental difference between fly fishing and gear fishing it’s not the fly line and it’s not the Flies themselves fly fishing is fly High fishing because we cast and control long pieces of material in the air when fishing a gear Rod sure we can cast 30 ft away with the flick of a wrist we can send the lure to the Target the weight of that lure pulls the line off the real spool and it goes with the lure to the Target but to cast that same 30 ft of distance while fly fishing the line is already off the spool and we cast and manage 30 ft of line in the air on a back cast and then a forward cast and delivery this bit of magic is performed with casting loops and with good technique the fly the leader in the line placement becomes deadly accurate it’s worth mentioning here that all fly fishing Styles require good casting skill my friends and I here fish a monor rig for most underwater presentations but this tightline approach for nymphs and streamers falls apart without the ability to cast and manage a long l through the air exactly like a fly line I say it all the time about tight line and Euro nymphing it’s casting not lobbing at least it should be lobbing can get things done for a while but to get anywhere beyond the basics or even to get under the next bankside tree limbs we need good casting form so we build loops with a great casting stroke and then place not just the fly line where we want it but the tippet and the leader in the best position too ironically it takes refined fly casting skills to cast the monor rig so all of us here fish long leaders and short ones we choose a powerful monor rig for pushing nymphs and streamers around and we cast dry flies with a fly line and a shorter leader too we fish a pure tight line with a single nymph and we fish dry dropper Styles yarn indicators with short leaders and fly line and we fish streamers with sinking lines sometimes too but all all of it every bit of it requires the same casting fundamentals and the ability to control lengths of line in the air and we must build casting loops with speed for the line to go anywhere for any of that style of line to go anywhere it’s fly fishing so it starts with fly casting and that’s what we’re here to talk about tonight we’ll break down some of our best tips for fly casting that apply to beginners and Advanced Anglers alike and I’m sure we’ll all learn a few things throughout this discussion it’ll be a good one so let me introduce the trout Pitt crew my longtime fishing Partners all these guys are full of ideas and thoughts on how to catch the next trout here’s Josh darling of Wilds media Matt groe Bill Dell Trevor Smith and Austin dando gentlemen how are you feeling good I’m just happy Gro wasn’t last this week what did I do to did you notice that yeah what did I do you got pumped up I took pity on you maybe five whiskies you didn’t have a technical difficulties tonight thank you yeah you know we were going to Haze you and you’re going to have to give us the remember uh episode one we said maybe you should have to give us the dumbest thing that you’ve ever done on the river every episode do you have anything you know for episode what are we on six is this six yeah six you have anything come on Matt what’s the second D Matt I feel like you could I think you could give about 10 examples of when I came out and we we took your the The Legend out for a ride I think we’ve got about 10 different the legend you have a name for your Bo the legend yeah that was the high side hide I got that there’s a lot there so if we need to do a couple moving forward well you will I’ll talk about that let’s here give me something dumb this one’s back in PA dumbest thing I ever did before I moved out here was George Daniel is gonna if he’s listening he’ll find oh I know this story this a good one yeah so he he uh this a good booked me to take him down uh one of my favorite tailwaters uh in Pennsylvania and it was him and his wife’s anniversary and he was in the midst of writing the streamer book and so you know everything’s good like I remember being really busy at work and I’m like okay tomorrow you know I’m G to take George Daniel fly fishing and getting ready to launch and for some I didn’t have like a six weight right and we got to throw we got to throw streamers and I had to borrow my dad’s sixe reel well I pull my dad’s six weight reel out and it’s just like 19 80 line like just right and we’re doing I’m just like oh my gosh so it starts off like that I’ll skip to the goods halfway through the float we’re in the most scenic Scenic part of the river and there’s no rocks like there’s no rocks you can’t see anything it’s like a lake I’m flip I’m flipping sideways or floating sideways tying on a fly for his wife and I crush a rock and project George out of the boat 50 degree water and I mean the dude it was like he was an Olympic diver he told me it was like he was on a trampoline and just went boing he just he projects out and he couldn’t have taken it better and and I know why George hasn’t reached out to me since I moved out here because he always goes to see his brother he always goes to see his brother and he never texts me so that that was pretty embarrassing that’s right who not to trust anyway that that was pretty dumb yeah you just sitting there trusting that the boat wasn’t going to crash into anything and then it did yes and it hit that rock that was really not visible and and uh sounds like you’re making excuses that rock wasn’t even visible not my fault yeah right what did you do next did he just spend the rest of the day wet oh yeah you’re on a float what else you going to do you’re wet buddy he’s wet but he just basically jumped back in the boats boat and started throwing streamers and leading into this podcast that dude’s accurate yeah there you go all right thanks Matt you line something up for us for next week too all right I got it we’re GNA need more new guy a little more hazing hey Trevor Trevor yo uh you texted a few of us cuz you had a I don’t know you caught a pretty special fish the other day in a in a pretty cool way pretty special way right tell us I did yeah yeah I did it for sure so I I’ve told you guys before that a lot of the time I get out it’s by taking a kid out fishing with me one of my three kids I have three kids and two of them are great at coming out with me one of them takes a little more delicate handling um but I took my youngest out who I’ve not taken out a lot since I took him out with Bill I think the last time I took him out and almost dumped him in the river how old’s your youngest Jack he’s two so Jack’s yeah he’s he’s going to turn three this September that’s Young Jack yeah Jack if you don’t remember was named after my uncle who taught me to fly fish so special special connection anyway took him out local water it was a rainy kind of cool day and as I suspected some kind of more popular accesses were not busy actually didn’t see another car the whole day and so stopped in at at kind of a more a more well-beaten path and yeah fished a section of river that I enjoy fishing on days like that when there aren’t as many folks out and yeah it was neat uh Jack immediately when we got down to the water there were quite a few olives coming off actually and there was a whole just swarm of swallows over the water and Jack just was mesmerized by the swallows just flying all around us didn’t care that we were there um kept pointing them out and thought they were going to run into US yeah we caught a couple fish kind of moving Upstream the fish were definitely active and feeding and and they were feeding a lot under the water and he loved getting to touch those fish so we caught a number of nice nice little trout as we move moved upstream and as we came Upstream we kind of came to this area that has a little bit of a broken kind of stream kind of contour and there’s a little island and and some channels that run kind of behind it and and so historically I’ve I have caught a couple decent fish on the other side of this channel when the water levels are high enough to support it and so given the levels of the river Jack and I kind of moved up slowly and I kind of talked to him as we were doing it telling him what we were going to do and he’s all in on it a real conspiratorial like a little 2-year-old can be um real excited about this and so we get down on our knees up on this little kind of Island and kind of crawl forward through the tall grass and kind of sit up and and kind of find where we think kind of we’re going to make our cast and use a backhand cast and kind of laay a a stonefly nymph right down in a real juicy looking run uh that I feel like has some potential and no sooner did that hit the water Jack I heard Jack kind of gasp as I saw this fish come up and take it way cuz it looked like I mean this fish had a big mouth and he came up and took that fly almost off the surface so he’s watching to see where the fly enters I going to say that’s pretty cool that he noticed where the fly was I pointed out to him where I was we were going to cast cuz I I just had a I had a good feeling um immediately on hooking this fish kind of turned sideways and tried to run down past us and and I stood up and Jack and I jumped into the middle of this channel he’s like I mean in his mind he’s like on a on a horse riding like a cowboy at this point cuz he does know what’s going on and the fish runs back Upstream we kind of spooked it back Upstream yeah right right get out of here go back up one real glitch in my fishing get up when I take my kids out is that I don’t have a great place to hang my net I usually clip it to the back of my chess pack but with the kids backpack I’d have to reach so far behind me to get behind that thing that I can’t do it and so not a great excuse but I haven’t been I haven’t been caught with my pants down so to speak yet until now and this was the day I did so as I I fought this fish pretty hard to the bank and knew that I was going to have trouble um just based on its size um containing it and so I I reached down as as I got it into shallow water and tried to lip it and I just I dug my thumb as hard as I could into its jaw and grabbed it hard yeah it’s a big fish it’s got big teeth and it took a good head shake and it tore you guys can see if you can I have three gashes on my thumb I had to Super Glue cuz it went down to the fat it was a deep deep cut places and it just started bleeding profusely on this trout and so a little bit of me was worried that I had hooked it in a place where it was bleeding but became pretty clear that my thumb was just gushing blood um and so I I sort of pinned it up into shallow water with my body with Jack behind me and Jack’s Jack had wanted desperately to touch every fish until that point but this one he was like ter absolutely terrified of because he scared of it he was scared of it and because of the way I grabbed it in its mouth it just was like had its mouth open and he was just blood too there is blood so in my panicked state I’m just thinking like all right this is this is a fish I catch once a season you know in the daytime and this is this is a great fish yeah I don’t have a way to measure him I don’t have my net has markings on it that I measure my fish with yeah and I don’t have that I don’t have a measuring tape so I you know in my moment of Genius I I FaceTime Josh darling um just for I just needed I needed a witness I needed a witness to say like you can see this right like this is a this is a really special fish this is a really good fish I’ve not caught a fish of this size in this water it so it’s special hear your heart racing through the Pham yeah absolutely and I do a measurement with my hands just a rough estimate because I know what my the length of my hands are so I had them somewhere around 22 in and I you know he was a she was a heavy fish 22 is the biggest I ever caught in that water yeah boy bill and I this weekend later caught a number of fish in about the 17 18 inch range and just the contrast between the size of this fish and those fish was pretty remarkable like a different animal different animal yep so what was Jack’s response oh my gosh was it chattering the whole time in your ear he’s in a baby not a baby backpack but a toddler backpack let’s say right Jack is like over my shoulder the whole time which is just such a great place to be for this whole episode pretty neat and a kid that’s so chatty was just he gasped when we caugh when we hooked it and he was so he was like open-mouthed watching it cuz I when I had my I took the picture and the camera flipped around Jack’s like wide eyed looking at this fish and he’s really Jack’s really into dinosaurs and sharks right now and he just kept calling it a shark the rest of the day on he really enjoys touching fish but he doesn’t want to touch a shark awesome and so he thought we caught a shark and he didn’t want to touch a shark he’s like Maybe not maybe actually actually maybe not touch shark because it’s a different it is it’s like a different animal fig out awesome actually maybe not touch shark that’s neat uh Becky my wife will not well when the kids were young I did the baby backpack thing the toddler backpack thing fishing twice she just didn’t like it she never she didn’t want me to do it again she’s like what if you fall in I’m like I’m not going to fall in I’m not going to choose those types of waters and I’m very safe and uh I can do this as a dad I’m fine she didn’t like it so I didn’t push it and the kids were with me almost you’re a good man well whatever but you do it quite a bit huh I do and I I do I have made a place for my waiting staff so I won’t do it without my waiting staff and sure despite the water type I just feel like that extra leg gives me the assurance I’m not going to fall in but yeah it’s I mean there it’s not that there’s no risk I was a waterfront lifeguard so I feel like I’m and I’m a I’m a physician you know so I feel like I’m well trained to be able to resuscitate anybody but so if you do drown necessarily make my wife feel good listen I can bring him back okay you know he may die he may die he might drown but I can bring her back it’s terrible yeah it is terrible um the kids were with me all the time I was daytime dad and so they were on the water enough and I didn’t push it but I just think it’s really neat to have the kid right there on your it was really special you know uh Josh you do that don’t you yeah same deal she’s good at that you ever catch a 22 though I mean do you have that kind of story with the kid on my back nah so never mind no I don’t do that I don’t yeah I don’t do that I love it I love good stuff it’s a good great memory and good thing to share with my son for sure that was awesome there’s nothing like the the those those kid moments I mean especially when they’re that young he saw a Shark yeah Precision fly and tackle is a family-owned business with a passion for the outdoors and a sense of adventure they are Anglers who enjoy every moment spent on the water with family and friends Precision fly and tackle carries the widest selection of Euro rods reels lines leaders flies and accessories from the beginner to the advanced angler Precision fly and tackle can outfit every angle no matter the budget visit them online at precisionflyerrepairs [Music] [Music] fishing scene while you may have no desire to compete you can still benefit from the same strategies which competitive Anglers use to make them more successful on the water whether you want to buy Ur an imping Rod a still water fly line or just some Hooks and Beads to fill your fly box we’ve got you covered and our teaching materials will help you learn how to use whatever products fill up your cart head on over to Tactical fly fisher.com and use the code tf10 to get 10% off flies fly tying supplies or terminal tackle all right let’s move on into our topic uh why it always comes down to Casting fly casting and what matters most let me mention this first there’s a category on the trout Pitt website called fly casting and you can find just about everything we’ll talk about tonight in that series of Articles it’s a great companion resource um to this podcast and many of those articles expand on the ideas that we’re going to talk about right now right so guys do you think it always does come down to fly casting is that the most important thing for success for actually putting trout in the net yes bill says yes I got an agreement from Bill Dell that’s big write that down sometimes sometimes Austin say sometimes there’s like this old saying I like that A Bad cast can catch a fish but a bad drift can’t tell us more so like maybe you don’t deliver the fly in the prettiest way yeah but if you’re able to recover that delivery not that you necessarily should have that as your goal but if you’re able to recover from that delivery and still end up in a good drift you can still catch fish I like that there’s two different things here and what we’re about to talk about is fly casting which is how the how we set it up so the fly goes in the water pretty much as soon as the fly goes in the water in my book in my terminology that cast is over and now it’s the drift agree how do we drift it how do we retrieve it whatever yeah that’s a good good point Austin you can often oh maybe correct your mistakes maybe you’re really good at correcting mistakes within the drift right yeah that’s a nice point you can occasionally catch a fish with a Bad cast but you can consistently catch more fish with consistently good casting yeah for sure I underestimated how important casting was uh for a very long time and I always thought like you know I’d read articles like yeah everybody writes this stuff and everybody talks about casting is it you know everybody cast that’s not true and when I started guiding I realized how important casting is and well I needed to start guiding and being around Anglers really uh not just new but really some experienced Anglers who are not fantastic casters really there’s always there’s something lacking I needed to see that to realize that wow I mean casting is the essence of it all that’s where it starts yeah you can correct it in the drift great point on but boy if if you can get that nearly perfect or perhaps Perfect cast boy you’re setting yourself up for a great drift and then you can do more throughout it I took it for granted I think it because oh just I had a lot of years on the water you know a lot of time I had a lot more time than the average angler ever gets on the water just the way my life went it’s kind of not you know it kind of worked out for me in terms of a fisherman um and and it kind of built over time just from experience and and caring about what I was doing it’s kind of like if you’re mailing a friend a letter is getting the address right the most important part or or the content of the letter every week it comes up with something you know if you if you don’t have the address right if you don’t have the address right it’s never going to get to the the intended recipient and the cast is cast is the address right dial that in there you go we can be done wrap it up return a dress every week the smart man comes up with something Return to Sender we’ve talked about this before but obviously it’s extremely important to have your flies in the water to catch fish and you’re not going to see any fish caught if your flies are in the air but it also shortens the drift if you if you do have to correct a Bad cast you get a substantially shorter drift than you would and it requires that correction it also you know if you can’t cast well then you’re going to end up trees and on logs and you’re going to be lobbing you’re going to be backcasting a whole lot wasting a bunch of time we’re probably going to get into that later yeah yeah and I mean reflecting on the story I told you guys about the fish I caught this past week m i mean that whole scenario was set up by taking the time to think of how to cast properly given the constraints I had with Limbs and and grass and and other things and the the cast that landed well set me up for a good hook set and all those things had to come into to play in order to to even think of catching that fish you know and so that was it was essential for sure he keeps bragging about his 22 anytime I get the chance you should you you should brag about your 22 it it was about 22 there’s no there’s no official measur it might have been 16 I’m being as conservative as I can be he’s really good at estimating that I think you guys know me I would underestimate he’s a physician didn’t you hear I think I think there’s a chance that fish was close to an there’s a chance I won’t go close to that I won’t touch that it was in that slot you know 21 to 28 I’ve caught I feel like I’ve caught enough fish in that realm still bragging still bragging to to have a good sense and like I said all Bill’s little fish over the weekend helped me really solidify that right cuz you see the the smaller ones the bill was catching you go this one was bigger than that yeah yeah that’s exactly right no so I think we all agree casting m matters it matters a lot and I think it yeah it matters the most it’s where everything starts let’s get it set up let’s get things right in the first place uh I’m going to start here with how we hold the fly rod I know that’s that seems so basic but man I just see it done I’m going to say wrong A lot of times what I like to think of is is find that balance point and some of us are obsessive about balancing the The Reel and the rod exactly where we want it to be on the cork I have a mark on my on my rod itself do you where I want the end of my thumb to be nice so you know where your balance point is you actually have a mark on and it’s not on the cork cool yeah yeah you’re up on the on the blank yeah yeah on the very far right right right and so I find that many people never even think about that necessarily for me and I think probably for all all of us we want to find that balance point where you can put your finger right on a spot let’s say it’s usually at the top of the cork for me and if you if you hold your finger right there on that balance point and then you’re either going to go thumb on top finger on top not going to try to cover all that right here but then you just you can kind of cradle that Rod you don’t need to squeeze it and if you’re not having to squeeze it to hold it so it doesn’t go tipped down or reel down if you’re not having to kind of support it if you can just cradle it then often well what you can do throughout the cast is kind of squeeze it on the Forward cast squeeze it on the back cast your hand doesn’t have to do a whole lot of work and then it can do more work at those power points of the cast which I think we’ll talk about in a little bit it’s a good point I I golf a little bit I’m not a great golfer but I’ve read a lot about Golf and there’s a lot of correlation between or a lot of crossover between the way that it’s described kind of an ideal way to hold a golf club and and a lot of it comes back to utilizing the whip kind of nature nature that acceleration of the thing you’re holding through space in order to take advantage of of its design and if you hold a golf club with a fixed grip and real tight kind of grip you really take out a lot of the benefits of speed that can develop through that cast and through the sorry through the golf shot and through the cast in in fly fishing and I do think they talk about holding a golf club kind of just firmer than it would take you know if it’s going to slip out of your hands just grip it firmer than that you know and that’s kind of where you cradling it so to speak that’s nice I do think there’s yeah there’s a lot of a lot of crossover between that and holding a fly rod and the more Loosely you’re able to hold that fly rod the more you’re able to take advantage of some of its designed features um as a as a device that recoils and kind of has stored energy and is able to unleash that energy forward and if you really grip with a fixed hand you see amateur fly fisherman often times cast with a really stiff arm and shoulder and they’re moving a lot of their body and yet the rod is not flexing and extending very much you know it kind of illustrates that point working too hard yep that’s the only time I’ve ever heard someone talk about fishing and golf at the same time really where I didn’t want to puke so that was really good Trevor there you can also I mean I coached Little League baseball right and I don’t know much about baseball but I’m good with little engaged kids and yeah it’s same kind of thing we tell them don’t squeeze that bat the whole way through but maybe at the very at the very end boom that right at your power stroke M you’re giving it everything you got right there everything kind of comes together yeah sometimes too I have people kind of when we’re fishing together they’re kind of squeezing their hand they’re going like shaking their hand out I’m like you’re trying too hard hold on let’s talk about this you know and again find that balance point find that point where you can just kind of cradle it you’re not working too hard then you have the ability to push that thumb into it if the thumb’s on Top push it in at the power stroke and pull back uh with your trigger finger um on the on the backstroke yeah stuff like that matters that’s really where it kind of starts you know for sure we talk a lot about that Tuck cast too yeah especially on a Tuck cast you push that Thumb in yeah I was just saying that I think that there’s a misconception that that the longer the distance is between well because if you put a weight on something then obviously the the farther out from the base it is the heavier that weight is going to be and so I think that there’s a misconception in that if you hold it right down up against the Reel that you’re going to get more leverage more power off the tip of that rod and and that’s just not the case it’s really not you you guys understand what I’m saying like like if you put say you have a board and you put weight right next to where it’s resting it’s not going to be that heavy if you put weight way out on the end of that where it’s resting it’s going to be real heavy and it’s probably going to tip this is kind of the same thing thing I think that’s the Assumption it’s further from the fulcrum yeah exactly there we go exactly but I think people assume that like the real is the fulcrum but really the balance point of the rod is the fulcrum oh nice there you go there you go yeah so we’re talking about the rod tip I always say this like cast the rod tip don’t cast the whole Rod don’t even worry so much about what you’re holding cast the tip know where your tip is and then you’re really going to control everything it’s the rod tip that controls everything this makes sense to us sitting here and talk about it when you’re out on the river if you know where that tip is you’re not going to be in the trees if you know what that tip is doing if you’re able to control that tip which might be 10t away from your hand you know nine n and 1 12et whatever your length of Rod is it’s pretty far away from your hand but that’s what you want to feel you want to be able to feel how uh how that tip is moving how it’s flexing and I don’t honest to God you do not need an expensive Rod to feel that almost every Rod I’ve ever cast you can feel that tip you can feel how it’s flexing you know what I mean yeah I think it’s far more important to know your Rod than it is to have the right rod I mean I’ve seen Josh fish very well with a rod that has no business fishing well yeah and yet um you know it’s just it’s all about knowing your Rod yeah yeah I think it’s an important point to press into you know in terms of just our listeners you know you don’t need casting isn’t about having the right rod and I think once you learn to cast well right you will appreciate a good rod but not the reverse or right a good rod won’t make you a great Caster Bill one of the biggest things I see guiding is people will not let the rod load as much yeah and so you talk about like the tip and so when you take it when you when you take the in your back cast M you you take the rod back um and and in not letting the line or even the mono uh load into the rod so what I mean by that is if you put like a heavier weighted fly on yeah and you in your back cast if you pause and you wait for the the the nymph or the streamer that you have on and if it’s a heavily weighted fly it will almost you’ll feel it like pull the rod tip backwards and so once it once it’s done that you know the rod is loaded and then come forward and so if you if you don’t do that what happens is you you lose a lot of momentum because it’s not you’re not letting the rod load and flex and so you’re not having speed and you’re going to lose a lot of accuracy as well yeah you got to be casting the line not the rod you know no matter what that line is whether it’s a monor rig or fly line if you’re not casting that line and letting making sure that that’s the thing that you’re focused on then you’re not going to get the you’re going to snap it you know every everybody hears when somebody’s learning or you hear yourself do it you’re like oh I didn’t wait because you hear that that snap you know yeah that Whiplash whatever yeah I like the point that you made Trevor you you know you were weren’t really talking about the acceleration when you were talking about the golf you were talking about the grip but you made a good point that and I mean if you notice that when you see people who are learning casting it’s all just back forth back forth back forth and it’s not that that acceleration to a stop and acceleration to a stop slow to fast in a very brief amount of space you know yeah I always make people say the word trout before they bring their rod tip forward go ahead that’s a little trick because I’m with Bill I think that’s the biggest mistake most people make is they want to they want to force it they don’t let the rod work for them that Rod’s built to project line out and it all it needs is a little as soon as you get into that backcast and you say the word trout before you start moving forward really helps helps folks pause and and learn how to project that line out well absolutely and then we get rid of those tailing Loops that is caused by coming forward too soon that’s good and the other thing here is um you know start close to yourself you know don’t try to send 60 foot casts out when you’re starting to learn how to cast a fly rod you know send 10 or 15t out your Rod get a comfortable Rhythm and slowly add on to that I like that yes yeah 60 feet is just way overshooting it right 30 feet is a great start you know if you’re casting fly line 20 feet maybe if you’re just tight lining this this idea of crisp short motions with the elbow down I’m going to say elbow down matters you know elbow down that’s what almost all fly casting instructors will teach you know your arm shouldn’t be hanging out there there should be almost no load on your shoulder and you know the whole 10 and two concept and this tight casting V all of that is where it all kind of starts but anyway we’re talking about this Rod load and when you’re you know you have the fundamentals I just talked about you can come forward too soon so the rod didn’t get a chance to load yet and then you can come forward well too late when the rod has already started to recover when you finally come forward there is a timing and like Matt’s saying it is it’s a subtle timing and then the more line you have out quite often the more you need to pause to let that Loop unfold back there you know these are the things we’re thinking about the speed the short the crisp motions and and that clean stop that seriously 10 think 10 and two CU that’s that’s good advice 10:00 2 o00 think 11 and one you’ll probably end up at 10 and 2 and it’s those crisp clean stops that allow the rod tip to load and if it doesn’t load then you’re working way too hard who was it that said in a podcast not too long ago that like it just looks I think it was you Bill it just looks effortless yeah it should if you feel like you’re working hard you’re doing something wrong you’re not it it your timing is off so to speak so if you’re coming back and you’re really pushing forward whether it’s mono whether it especially if it’s fly line fly line is I don’t know I would recommend if you’re just starting out I would recommend always starting with fly line same and get used to because it the the fly line is heavier and it’ll teach you feel it more how the rod load it feels how it reacts where the mono rig is probably a little bit more technical to cast very accurate at distances because it’s not as heavy and so it’s not loading the rod as much and so it takes a little bit more subtle feel perfect I totally agree with that so well said yeah so well so well guy’s a genius so well so well so well water is essential for life but for Orvis it’s the blood of the brand Orvis has been the leader in fly fishing since 1856 no other brand can match the explorative and Innovative Spirit they bring to the water today everything at Orvis is about inspiring and empowering adventure and wonder in nature rooted in the Vitality of fly fishing fueled by Passion and curiosity for the outdoors Orvis designs and develops products and experiences providing the knowledge and expertise to enable more meaningful moments and Connections in nature with over a century and a half of experienc in the field and on the water Orvis seeks to ignite that passion in [Music] others I think for me through the years what I’ve really understood it doesn’t matter if we’re casting streamers on a sinking line if we’re casting dry flies you know on a on a 10t l and fly line or we’re casting a mono rig with tightline nibs I want everything to turn over before it goes to the water I want crisp clean Loops that are pretty much parallel with the water surface um and I don’t need to do a bunch of false casting to do that either one false C or one back cast and then right back in anyway I want those Loops to unfold over top of the water and then they’ll go down in now it’s very different how they go down in in all three ways that I said about the sinking line with the streamer about the uh the the dry fly leader with the fly line and about the monor rig or the tight line rig it’s very different how they’re going to go in if it turns over on that tight line rig then what I get is a Tuck cast going down in you know if it turns over on a dryly leader what I get is what I call stop and drop and in that case I get kind of almost a recoil on the dry fly and I’ll get s-curves dropping to the water you how I want them to drop there anyway turnover turnover over I think is it’s essential to good casting I want that Loop to completely turn over and then it’ll go to the water so tell I mean so you can help folks maybe that don’t have as much appreciation for why that is what is it about the lack of turnover let’s take the extreme example a cast that the belly of the line lands first or you know what what is it about that that really limits your your ability to fish well yeah sure so that’s a cool question question so let’s take a fly line and a dry fly leader if the loop actually finishes unfolding on the water now I’ve laid line on the water before the dry fly hits and it well the loop is unfolding on the water boy I have much less control about how much slack I want to provide to the dry fly cuz that fly Line’s already moving yeah ex that’s such a good point right the fly line and the butt section of the leader is already being dragged down streight before the dry fly even hits might not be a good look um there are different ways you can manage that as Austin said throughout the drift you could start mending okay anyway I want my Loop to unfold in the air and let’s take it over to a monor riger a tightline nymphing Euro nymphing approach that allows me then to have a fly first entry talk about that all the time that’s what I want fly first entry the fly goes in first because the loop unfolds and the fly’s not going to go anywhere where but down next you know you fly the fly gets to the end of the line it still has momentum because that Loop is still unfolding and now the fly boom tucks down it’s obviously not going to go up gravity boom takes it down yep and so I get a fly first entry so that’s a cast right and the opposite of that is lobbing and and that Loop just doesn’t have enough momentum to turn itself over so what hits first is not the fly but the loop the loop that should have unfolded in the air is now unfolding on the water and it’s just kind of lagging and it’s going okay all right y okay you drag right from the right yeah and finally the fly hits but now you have five six seven eight feet perhaps your fly is not sinking right yep all those things that are on the water the tipet the The Cider maybe maybe even part of the butt section everything now is causing drag and we don’t we no longer have even anything close to a fly first entry you have a leader first entry which is essentially lobbing yeah so you we were talking about turnover so yeah how do you ensure that you’re getting the correct turnover you need so we talked about loading the rod yeah go ahead so we’re now talking about turnover and so to be able to to get the best turnover and power during that turnover yeah you have to let the rod load otherwise you’re not going to get that power to turn over the fly line right on that’s so that’s where those kind of two things are tying together for sure that’s a great point you have to let the rod work for you but the only way the rod works for you is putting speed into the system and I say all the time like put more juice in the cast that’s the thing man like more speed in between those well in between the two points of let’s say again 10:00 2 o’ speed more speed the one thing I see Anglers lacking the most is speed in their cast and I don’t care what the system is dry fly line sinking line monor rig you need more speed you need to make that Rod work it’s speed between two points that gets the rod loading like Bill’s talking about you know what I mean yep 100% And the speed gives you a trajectory when I talk about it if you’re fishing an overhang overhanging tree there’s no way you can lob it in there because the lob is going to to catch the tree and so if you’re if you have to get underneath the tree you need a fast and low trajectory and so if you can’t get that speed to generate that low trajectory underneath that tree then you’re not going to get underneath the tree I think this goes back to that original discussion about the purpose of a rod and this includes the essential holding of that rod and kind of a loosen your hand feel but we use graphite rod rods nowadays because they’re the best material we have at storing that kinetic energy the energ occurs when we quickly change directions and that kinetic energy can transfer through the rod tip into the line and create a really tight Loop and if you move your whole arm and shoulder kind of as one with the rod and try to cast taking the Whip and that quick acceleration out of it you might as well cast with a with a long stick you know with a piece of wood that might work too Y and you might want to if you want to do that that’s all on you but the whole benefit of the rods we design nowadays is that you really get the most out of that quick acceleration and stop with the speed it’s all about the speed yep so what I see a lot of times is when people get near trees they start to get intimidated by them want a b it in they come back fast and then they decelerate coming forward perfect and and so when they decelerate everything starts to get bunched up and so even if it does make it under the tree your leader and your fly all land in the same spot yeah and so when you’re coming forward continue to accelerate and come to like abrupt stop right on again it all of this stuff applies no matter what we’re casting right right yeah that abrupt stop what I what I find Bill is I say people want to baby it in they get around structure they get around the trees it’s totally natural I I find myself doing it and I got to talk myself out of that bad habit and I said n no no keep the speed in there it’s the speed actually that gives you accuracy and as soon as you let’s say baby it in or take the speed out now you don’t have loops anymore you have this Big Arc like you said it’s going to hit the tree limbs up above because you don’t have a tight Loop going under the tree limb you have kind of an arc just a lazy Arc up in the air and oh I wrapped around that tree limb it’s bad I think a couple uh I’m just reading a book by Paul weamer Dry Fly strategies and he comes up with a pretty cool example he’s he’s the buggiest dude I know uh he is buggy yeah he’s very buggy but um you know how many of us are of our listeners are intimidated trying that type of cast because they’re going to lose a $3 Adams or a $4 you know mayfly imitation fair and Paul had a cool story where when he was living in Altuna he had a stream I think it was in in his backyard and he was having a similar problem and he went back with a you know fake fly and something that wasn’t going to get hooked up in the tree and just kept practicing um you know without an actual fly on right until he figured out he got the confidence to whip it in there and and kind of feel how that line plays out in a real real world situation so that’s kind of a trick you could you could do if if you want to practice some of these skills that that you guys are talking about do any of you guys practice casting out away from the water do you guys do that I have a pond in my backyard and so I’ll I’ll practice like if I want to practice distance because there are no trees it’s kind of in a field when I first started learning to fly fish I would do it a lot because I would want to get used like we talked about the timing and so it does take the timing of things and loading the rod and just getting used to it all this stuff doesn’t happen in like 10 minutes this is yeah you know hours and hours on the water yeah these days you know we all want things to to happen quickly but yeah there’s there’s only so much you can do with an hour of practice it it takes a season or seasons of practice to get this stuff down you have to be somewhat patient with yourself when I get a new dryly leader or I want to try a new dryly leader and I’m not able to go to the stream right away I’ll just take it out in my backyard and and cast it around to get a feel for it really but I don’t necessarily practice casting on a regular basis outside of fishing I don’t think I’ve done it since I did it with you Austin since we tried the Tuck cast in your driveway I really don’t think I driveway tuck casting yeah well have you heard about this Tuck cast we got to do this let’s have a beer and do it at dark yeah do this thing well it’s just you know I can I can walk to one of my favorite streams in in a matter of a couple minutes and so if I’m going to if I’m going to take the time to put the rod together and do it then I’m going to go to the river and have flies in the water for it yeah that’s the same for all of us here you know what um when I first started fly fishing I was in Western Pennsylvania and I did not have Great Waters Around Me by any means and I also didn’t even have a driver’s license so I you know I was young and yeah I remember casting in the grass in my parents backyard and you know that’s a fine way to do it it is different mhm like you said bill it’s great to have that what even if it’s just a pond just still water whatever it is it’s great to have that water things change with the cast when the line is on the water yep yeah hey what else guys yes we talked a little bit about false casting and how in general we try to avoid excessive amounts of it but what do you guys think is the rightful place of a false cast where is it useful for me it’s drying out my dry fly if I’m fishing a hatch and I’ve caught a fish and the and the fli is you know slimed up I might throw five or six false cast to kind of dry that fly out before I present it back into the water because it’s going to float better that way yep same here I use a false cast to change directions if I’m going to go from forehand to backhand for example if I’m going to go from casting mostly Upstream to now maybe for whatever reason I want the next cast to go almost across stream and again it doesn’t matter what leader or style we’re using yeah I’ll I’ll throw a what I call a setup cast but it’s a false cast the three-point turn that’s right Josh when Josh and I were filming that’s what he started calling it was a three-point turn it’s some points it became a five-point turn that’s right but no that’s cool that’s a good way to look at it yeah and in general we’re trying to limit that false casting cuz bad things happen with too much false casting especially let’s imagine you have more one fly on there and sometimes an indicator or whatever let’s not false cast too much cuz bad things you know Tangles happen right so here’s a question when you false cast once how far can you cast let’s say it’s a dry fly line mhm what’s your you know how like I guess to an average are you just asking if we lose Distance by not false casting no I’m going to answer I’m going to say three times as far as what I had I feel like I can shoot out yeah oh three times as as far as what my backcast distance was with the right speed with the right crisp stops let’s say I let’s say when I Back cast I had 20 feet out I feel like I could end up going 60 feet out and I’m sure better casters go a lot further than that I agree I feel like it’s a misconception of you have to work like if you want to throw 60 feet you have to make 10 Balls cast and each time you’re incrementing the line you have out by three or four feet or whatever it is versus if you take it back and you let the rod load and then you come forward and have the abrupt stop you should like for me I feel like I can cast just as far doing that as I can making 15 or let’s say five or six false cast because it’s all just if you have the timing down you’re generating the line Speed Line speed to to shoot it out you know 50 like you’re I mean 50 or 60 ft if you need to if you need to we we rarely need to cast that far yeah another thing worth mentioning probably here is you know we’re talking a lot from the perspective of a waiting angler you know if you’re in a boat you’re floating down the creek or the river and you’re false casting for you know half of your cast every cast you’re passing up a lot of good potential lies right so make the cast put it in there retrieve it back to yourself at most give you one Back cast and put it back in again you know it’s it’s more to your benefit to to just get the fly back in the water than it is to get exactly where you want it every single time because you’re just not going to be able to CU what can you do once it hits the water Austin I don’t know you can make a better that’s that was your first point right like sure best of it sometimes sometimes you can correct it in the drift I liked that yeah I was going to just say that like not everybody’s going to be able to cast three times what their what their back cast length is but it really good practice is to try to cast double you know double sure like if if you’re back if you’ve got if you’ve retrieved or or mended in you know say 15 fet go into that back cast with that excess 15 ft that’s out on your line and then shoot all that 30 feet out we’re going to have to do a whole podcast on shooting line and I’m not joking oh yeah seriously shooting line is a whole different thing and we’re not going to try to tackle it here you can shoot line on the pickup even before start your back cast you can let line go on the pickup you can of of course shoot line on the back cast on the back cast as it goes out if you have enough line speed and that’s what it always comes down to you can boom you can shoot out almost all of your retrieved line on the back cast and then you can shoot line on a forward cast and I’ll separate this into two things you can shoot line on a forward cast before your power stroke or you can do your power stroke your stop at let’s say 10 o’cl and then you can shoot the line out there that’s kind of my preferred way to do it but there’s different reasons to do all of that stuff shooting line I bet you maybe like what like season 7 get around to it well a huge shooting line a huge benefit being able to do that without shooting line in the back in the backcast is a lot of times we are pressed up at least around here we’re pressed up against some kind of brush or tree you know we’re not that far from the bank so we don’t want to shoot our full distance out behind us because you’re going to hit something and so you want to know how shoot a short amount back and then make up for that on the on the shoot right on absolutely kind of stemming from the backcast conversation one thing that I find with the monor rig in particular that can be really advantageous is to incorporate even a different Rod tip motion than your kind of standard back and forth um and and kind of an oval an oval motion that we a lot of us talk about in terms of our our monor rig cast can really open up um and Bill and I were talking about this fishing recently it just open up a lot of different abilities to present your fly to locations that you couldn’t approach with a straight forward and back approach that that three three-dimensionality to that oval cast can sometimes tuck a fly under under an overhanging hanging limb with a bit of a tuck even um and give you the beginning to a drift that you couldn’t approach through a straightforward overhand cast without utilizing I I think of the oval cast as almost it’s a setup for almost a backhand cast in some ways in in one sense and then in the other sense it’s like a backhand Back cast to an overhand Forward cast you’re sort of switching between the two depending upon which way you’re moving and yet yeah it really does I I find it an essential skill for a fly fisherman fishing a monor rig on a on a stream or on a any sort of water that has overhanging limbs or any sort sort of structure like that that’s going to limit your your overhead kind of clearance for the fly line or for your for your leader so you talk about the oval cast and so the one thing the oval cast does you know you’re you’re you’re doing that oval in order doing that oval backwards Dom just talked about like loading the rod with line speed and so still a stop you’re dragging that you know when you’re doing that oval cast you’re dragging it through the water but when it comes out of the water it’s kind of it it is shooting line backwards and immediately loading the rod so that it can come forward again in the oval so one you guys want to explain what the oval cast is I think the the rod tip itself is sort of making an oval with its path so I think that’s that’s kind of the base of the oval cast the fly line itself may follow more of a circular Arc or the leader may fly a little bit more of a circular Arc until the point where you kind of have your forward stroke and at that point I think it follows a little bit more of a straight line and with some some amount of curve I guess into into the location that you’re casting but um in my mind I guess as I’m conceptualizing it I’m thinking of drawing kind of a large oval with my my casting hand that begins and ends at the same point with a sharp acceleration and a sharp deceleration at that same point um on the on on the back and forward cast so I’ll use oval casts more when I when I have extra weight let’s say to keep things separated more I’ll do it more I’ll do an sort of an oval cast more when I have an indie on and let’s say I have two flies on now I have three things on the line that I don’t want to tangle so I sort of uh accentuate that oval exaggerate that oval helps keep things from tangling uh but I I want to point out that we’re talking about this oval cast every cast for me yeah uh there has to be an oval in the rod tip travel let’s say a fly line with a dryly leader and a number 12 atoms right on a 10t leader when you go back it has to kind of go out and around and then go forward let’s say almost straight over the top if you go in the same plane Back cast and forward cast you’re going to tangle that fly almost every time the fly is going to hit the line or even hit the rod yeah it has to go out and around kind of out to your side and then over the top that’s the way I describe it anyway and there is an oval literally if you look you know from a bird’s eyee view you would see an oval I can actually attest to that cuz when we were filming the streamer series and you were casting I had a drone above you and I was yes watching from directly above and I think that if anybody would be surprised that if they got to see that view their best casts they’d see a very clear oval and when we talk about oval casts we’re just accentuating that for sure nice and so everybody does it well almost everybody does it on every good cast and it doesn’t matter again if we’re casting a sinking line with streamers or a dry fly uh or or a monor rig there is an oval in that Rod to again think bird’s eye view like Josh was just saying if you could get that drone up there if you’re casting right all right you’re gonna have that it’s there however I find that when I start saying oval to people they they think Circle instead of oval and an oval allows for well a load a stop kind of yeah it is there’s a stop back there it goes out and around stop wait for the rod to load like we first talked about and then you feel the rod load boom then I’m going over the top and there’s an oval and within that oval there’s you know the back the backward part of the oval and then the the forward part that oval kind of allows for these well it’s not a circle it’s not a continuous thing there’s kind of a stop back there it’s a football yes it is yeah and there’s points to the end of that football yeah that’s nice every cast does it every good Fly cast has that oval in the rod tip travel good stuff the only view you ever see is that side shot of the of the line just laying out over itself and it’s not really over itself and it looks like it’s just gone back and forth maybe in the same plane right right and it is it shouldn’t be over itself like you say we should be casting nice you know tight Loops yeah fishing a you know dual nymph or a indicator or a dry dropper system anything with more than one weight Source on on the end of that line you don’t want it to be right over itself yeah very much so have a lot of Tangles you have to give it some space somehow yeah good point Matt you’re very quiet don’t you like casting I’m listening you know the the re the reality I as you guys are talking I’m like man you guys are I don’t guide as much as you guys and it’s like I’ve been fly fishing since I was 11 and it becomes this serious though it becomes second nature at some point and I don’t even think about any of this stuff I make it happen and and the important thing though I think for most experienced Anglers to take away from this if you think you’re a good Caster or you’re not you or you need to work on some skills be humble because chances are you’re not perfect right and small adjustments as as we’ve discussed could really help and I think it’s smart to challenge yourself you know to to look at your form and take a deep breath because really I mean is there you know as I’m listening to everybody talk it’s like when you approach a stream and you know and it’s foggy and it’s quiet and you see someone that can really cast you know is there anything more like artistic in the sport than than that scene of of throwing a fly line um it’s pretty cool to just sit down on the bank and watch someone throw some fly line from time to time because it truly is an art yeah I like that yeah and like I said the bad habits I mean I you know we know we all get them I mean you it’s like I I I think oh yeah I think of like we we all start with this this wonderful base set of skills that we’ve discussed here and then there’s the you know the Patrick Mahomes that still zip it in there sideways right they still get the job done um but then you can get you know he throws some inter he throws some interceptions as the season goes on and a lot of times it’s mechanics yeah you know and so it’s good to it’s good to readjust what you’re doing from time to time well said um one other thing I was going to mention with all these different techniques that we’ve discussed there’s one thing out there that really Peds the accuracy of a of the casting and that’s wind and and I experienced it this weekend and and wind can really frustrate you when you’re trying to throw a dry fly or or the mono rig or whatnot and some of the things we did this weekend um when I was battling some of that wind was switch Banks cast with the wind as opposed to against it and maybe approach a rising fish from Upstream instead of Downstream because let’s face it I mean how often you’re saying you like the wind behind you I do yeah and I think I I alter my fish um fishing with the wind um at times instead of trying to battle it it’s important for everybody to take a deep breath and say okay how can I approach you know we were fishing the March Brown hatch out here and had at least four or five fish Rising but just couldn’t get that that drift and so we kind of changed positions as uh got Upstream of them and cast Downstream to them and we had more success than than trying to force it you know Against the Wind yeah I like that I was just going to ask do do you guys um do you guys think that different fly lines there’s so many fly lines out on the market today do you feel like that’s impactful to the success of your cast at all that Anglers should consider or should folks not spend too much time worrying about that I don’t think it matters I hardly do it doesn’t matter but I I do think there’s a little I don’t know over the last two years I’ve really started to migrate towards double taper fly lines instead of the weight forward yeah more because the weight forwards are so aggressive now because they are helping people try to cast further and longer when you get into a a a a small area and you’re trying to fish the weight forward line loads so fast yes that it’s hard in a confined space to put it where you want it because it does come through the guide so fast yeah yeah and they like to crash a lot harder than a regular double tapered line which is really frustrating that’s not what you want to do it’s hard to find these days a double taper line MH once again the industry is catering to Anglers who maybe don’t have the best casting skills and they’re saying hey we’ll help you out by giving you this overweighted line and especially a weight forward line there’s nothing wrong with the weight forward line Go Fish it you know but you might actually want to under if you have great casting skills you might want to underweight by one line size whereas often you’ll hear like go ahead and overweight it one line size trust me most of those fly lines are already kind of overweighted one line size especially the weave forwards that’s a good point Bill like two years ago I feel like I think Chase had posted something mhm like the industry has moved into like you’re talking about like an overweighted system of if you buy a four-weight line it’s really a five weight line but they’re overweighting it so that it’ll appear to perform better for you because it’s allowing you to throw the fly line at a further distance yeah if they’re marketing the line as powerful I mean that’s kind of a tell it’s up to you to make the line powerful and it’s again down to the speed and the crisp stops and that’s what loads the rod that’s what creates the power and that’s up to you heck again we do it on a monor rig every day you know and then we’ll go over to a fly line and do it but once you if you can do it on a monor rig with refined casting Styles you can certainly do it on a fly line even an underweighted fly line sure any other uh tips guys kind of maybe final tips so this is trout bitten right we’re targeting trout I know everybody here isn’t necessarily casting to saltwater fish or fishing lakes a lot and so I find that when you start getting to a point where you’re really casting fly line out especially in the Central PA or Pennsylvania in general or even out here in Montana your success rate for hooking fish goes if it start if you start missing a lot of fish you’re probably trying to cast way too far anyway um I feel people get too aggressive and too confident and they really try to reach out and kiss something you know that’s Rising on that far bank and they should probably take a deep breath walk Upstream 10 yards and and and shorten that cast so sometimes it can go against you um you really being able to cast a lot of fly line out I feel like there’s a little bit of an evolution with that is like when you first learn to be able to cast that far you you know it’s like a it’s like a new toy and you you want to play it and you’re like I’m throwing it across the river and so it’s cool it’s fun but your toy keeps breaking because you keep missing that fish so you know wait a little bit further make shorter cast and you’ll catch the fish because once again it’s not just about where the fly lands but where your tippet lands where does the rest of your leader land and where does your fly line land and you have to manage all that other stuff there he goes right let’s say you can make the cast all the way across the River M now you got a whole width of river that your fly Line’s Laying across go ahead and try to M that successfully see what happens see how that goes in it in the reaction of it like you think about you visually see that fish eat and by the time you set the hook in the in the in the fly line you know the momentum gets to the point where it’s going to try to put that hook in a fish yeah there’s a big timing difference and the fish ate it spat it out and Shad on it and game over go that’s a good way to put it I have one more thing I’d like to bring up here uh this sounds small but it’s a big thing don’t reach I’ve mentioned this earlier the elbow should really be pretty close to your side I’m not saying it has to be glued to your side but some fly casting instructors will force you to hold a book trapped between your elbow and your rib cage that’s not a bad place for your elbow to be I’ve never forced anybody to do that but yeah it’s a good place essentially you want the elbow down and the rod tip up and and if your shoulder hurts at the end of the day I promise you you’re doing it wrong when I was growing up up in Warren Pennsylvania there was a man that went to our church named Clarence Baldwin and he wore a three-piece suit to church every week and after church on Sundays he’d take me over to his yard and set me up in his backyard casting into his Fedora in the backyard and he’d make me hold the Bible under my arm i c the whole time that’s amazing and it really drove home that exact point Clarence Baldwin was there a metronome Beast there was he counted he counted for me as I did it right so he was sort of the metronome but old school you know great fly fisherman great Caster fly line but that’s neat to have that history yeah yeah and think of the rod I like to think of the rod as an extension of my arm and not like a foreign tool that I’m working against part of you know yes you know stand there comfortably and casually and just imagine the the rod as simply an extension of your arm and what you’re trying to achieve don’t try to push the line or push the rod around to where you want it to go great Point Austin cast a tip cast a rod tip as long as you know where that is heck you can have a 10- foot rod in a whole bunch of mountain laurel and and and overhanging branches as long as you know where that tip tip is you’re good you’re in control of it that’s a neat Point like think of it as an extension of you you can’t just snap your fingers and make that happen you’re going to have to spend some time on the water MH but eventually you know where that Rod tip is and maybe use the same Rod over and over and over and you get a real feel for you know where that tip is yeah yeah sure all right so there it is fly casting and what matters most thanks again to Bill Dell Trevor Smith Austin dando Josh darling and Matt Grobe that’s another great conversation thanks to everyone out there listening and to our sponsors I appreciate your support So Fly casting is where it all starts as Austin pointed out we can make corrections after the cast and through the Drift But a great cast sets us up with the best opportunity to catch trout time and again we aim for accuracy not just for where the fly goes but for the tippet the leader and the line too because wherever that tipet goes the attached fly is going next the next time you’re on the water think about the fundamentals covered here consider your casting V feel the rod tip load build more Flex into the rod with increased speed and deliberate stops no matter what method you’re fishing these casting fundamentals always apply we know when the cast is right the first effortless cast is an epiphany when all the elements come together and we finally get it it the fly rod does the work and we realize we could do this all day long without fatigue we pursue perfect casts because we fish hard because we care about Improvement and because the refinement of our skill set is an endless draw catching trout is a wonderful companion for our hike Upstream through these watery paths and our best days out there happen because we learn something hey find the companion article for this podcast on the trout pitten website and follow the links for so much more about fly casting and catching trout Trevor will you read us out sure thing remember trout bit.com is a free resource for all Anglers with over 800 articles there are stories commentaries tactics tips and more find what you like through the top menu and through the search page navigate by way of the categories and tags too thank you for listening to the troutbitten podcast please give the show a fstar rating on Apple podcasts and leave us a comment cuz that really helps until next time friends fish hard enjoy the day and find your life on the water [Music] he keeps bragging about his 22 anytime I get the chance still bragging still bragging let’s have a beer and do it at dark feels good there he goes there you go we can be done see what happens I’m still bragging still bragging and toss him up on the bank cuz it doesn’t hurt him it’s okay it’s your own bank on the bank there’s no big deal on the bank it’s still bragging still bragging