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Why do I suck at Fly casting? :( Need your guidance and experience help Please! I'm Depressed :(

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Awesome John

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I know practice makes perfect but there is something else wrong here .. probably just plain ignorance and thats why I am asking for your help please.:(

 

I am a 200 yard power caster with convention gear and a 5 ounce sinker..

 

I can wrist snap a hopkins tin 120 yards with spinning gear....

 

But now that I have decided to take a crack at saltwater fly casting I notice I am sucking up storm.. :help:

 

The darn line does not fly through the guides enough.. no torque it seems... I have studied countless fly casting videos on youtube and put in time "trying to do it right" and yet after all the false casting double hauls and perfect form the fly lands 20 feet in front me and my face gets so red I look like a veiny tomato..:why:

 

So I decided to go back and check out my hardware :huh:

 

 

I am using an Okuma "Guide Select" 9 ft rod that is an 8 weight model number GSF- 08- 9 - 4 and an Okuma Helos fly reel.. the combo feels very sweet in my hands but the line aint moving out fast through the guides :huh: after checking "what have I done wrong here" I noticed that the line I was using was 10 weight line okey thats one mistake.. I changed the line to 8 weight Fenwick Techna "aircutter" weight forward line expecting a great improvement and even though it felt much better I still sucked in distance...

 

I am suspecting thats its another hardware problem because I am a well coordinated athletic guy and I know this fly casting aint easy and will take time and finesse but my spider sense tells me that there is something else wrong here...

 

After thinking this over for a while I am suspecting that my leader is too long in front of the fly line...

 

let me measure it now..

 

"""Time Flies""

 

Its 9 feet 8 inches from the fly to the fly line... maybe too long?

 

And here is the length of my ties to make the leader from the fly there is 28 inches of 20 pound floro , tied to 68 inches of 30 pound floro thats looped onto 17 inches of 40 pound floro that is albrighted onto the fly line...

 

This is probably where the problem lies I think.... what do you say my dear experienced SOL fly buddies? :love:

 

Please help me to get this right I haven't done this before, when it come to fly fishing "I izzz stooopid" :freak:

The Horizon Calls..........
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hey john, guess it's hard to find a guru fly fishing mentor in turkey? :)

 

i have 4 fly rod setups in 5wt, 8wt (2), and 10wt. the 8wt and 10wt took some fiddling of weight forward floating line to make it work best for my "style" of casting and one of the 8wt rods (9' tfo bvk) works real well with sa mastery s/w wf8f and about 5' of 30# mono leader handshake looped to a 3' 14# to 20# bimini twist fluoro tippit. i had also tried wf9f but the wf8f just worked best for that rod and me. however, on an uber cheap yelowstone 9' 8wt rod the wf9f was just a better match to load it. and that's the bottom line - using a line weight that properly loads rod, and then add in yer casting style. cheers and rock on!

 

ps - are you SURE about how you cast? remember - straight line, no arc!

The only government I trust is the .45-70

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"I am a 200 yard power caster with convention gear and a 5 ounce sinker.."

 

That could be part of your problem right there - if you bring that approach into the fly fishing arena, your casts are not going to be pot. Remember this and embed it in your head even before you try casting again: while the goal is to cast the fly a given distance, your approach/mentality has to be that you're casting the line, not the fly...You're fly line is what's providing the fly's momentum. With spinning/conventional casting, you're directly casting the weight of the lure...that's why in fly fishing, you hear a lot of talk about a good even/straight stroke, loading, forming a tight loop and other terms that specifically helps cast a fly line, not a fly

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As far as loading, compare that to shooting a rubberband at someone. The rubberband has to be stretched backwards before you let it go and it shoots off your fingers. Loading is the process where your line is stretched to a perfect amount of tension behind you so that, when timed with the forward stroke, the appropriate amount of energy exchanges to provide good forward momentum...false casting is the the process of building momentum on your forward and back casts which will lead to good energy exchange

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alba is right on - check yer casting of the LINE, not the fly. watch the online vids. the rod moves in a straight line, no arc. this allows for a tight loop and distance. if you arc the rod, the line, leader, fly will dump somewhere close in front of you in a nice little pile.

 

kreh has a nice quick vid ...

 

The only government I trust is the .45-70

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Stop, stop STOP!!! listening to internet flycasting help. It can only get you so far.

 

It's true, because you are an accomplished spin caster you bring a preconceived notion and muscle memory to your flycasting. You must find someone to work with you in person. OK tough in Turkey I imagine, so back to the inter web.

 

Maybe if you were able to post a video of your casting we could help you better.

 

You are going to have to unlearn a lot of muscle memory that takes over without you even thinking about it. If you want to get descent at this you should not cast anything else for quite some time.

 

Good Luck!

 

O

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lacking local mentoring, the net is a GREAT (if not ONLY) viable resource for learning the art of fly casting. as with most sports, it always comes down to a basic, correct form. with fly casting, it's moving the rod on a flat plane. that's it. no rocket science or magical art. take yer rod handle only in yer casting hand. sit down next to a table. prop yer elbow on the table, grasp the handle with thumb forward, slide yer elbow on the table and "cast". stand up and do it - if right handed, it pays to have yer right foot to the rear. then practice lots.

The only government I trust is the .45-70

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Hi John,

 

If I hd a $1 for every time I hear the big man good athlete stuff I would be rich. I know you are a competant spin caster hell I fished with you once. There is no reason why you can't be a great fly Caster to.

 

Gear is also not a solution to your current woes. You have a rod now matched to roughly the right line good starting place gear wise.

 

The smallest men and women can and do make good Fly casters. It really is about technique and not brute power. far far from it. Last year in Cape Cod the Lady I rent our house off was watching me cast a Two hand rod in her garden she was interested enough to ask if she could have a go. Now this was a 14 foot very powerful Surf Th fly rod. After just showing her a few times how to do an overhead cast this less than 5 feet 1 inch Lady was laying down 110 feet cast. Whats even more lovely she did it with a rod of 14 feet which I can tell you scares off many Guys on SOL as they are SH users and have a problem with anything over 11 feet. But this Lady had no preconceptions to trouble her, She just did it.

Feel is important Jihn and you develop that fairly quickly. the ery best advise I can offer you is to find someone who is a qualified Fly casting Instructor and get soem lessons that way you start off doing it right off the bat. Groove in bad habits andnyou will spend the rest of your life trying to rid yourself of them.

If you are coming out to Monatuk this fall I can offer to help. Honestly within an hour you can be casting pretty well.

 

The only possible snag with your gear maybe your rod guides. If they are ceramic and too small they will grab your fly line.

 

John practice is often touted as a possible solution and the irony is practice is only really effective in my opinion if you already know what you are doing and can analyse your cast and correct errors. At the start what are you going to practice most to be honest is rubbish unless you have a good Teacher alongside. If you go to a beach you will see way more poor fly casters than you will Spin Guys and there is a solid reason for this. Most of us have tried to self teach and then buy a solution with ever more expensive gear when it all goes wrong. I am a victim so I know.

 

There just has to be a Teacher in Turkey John.

 

It would be great to have you join our ranks.

 

Mike

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Took me months to get the Double Haul down.......but once I got it.............I got it.....just keep practicing.

"Law enforcement’ is not something sovereign citizens seize from police officers. It is a societal function that citizens delegate to civil police.

In so doing, we do not abdicate our own sovereignty, nor our duties as citizens. Ultimate responsibility is still ours. When those we hire as our “Protectors” are either unwilling or unable to perform that function at the critical moment, there is no law, nor standard, that says we cannot perform it for ourselves"........ John Farnam.

 

"Gird Your Loins"

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Break it down into steps.First,just 30' of line.Practice till the loop,fwd and back cast look good.Don't add line yet.Practice that for a few days till you can do it w/o thinking about it.When ya get that down,let a lil line slip on the backcast to add distance.When you can do that and not have the cast collapse work on your "hauL"(that lil tug w/ your line hand just before you change directions) ,lotsa videos on that.



Take your time and don't muscle it as that just defeats fly casting.The casting dynamics,arm motions (other than back and forth) and power applications of spinning casting do not transfer to fly casting.If you find yourself using your forearm for extra muscle,relax,use your upper arm more and don't force it.The final cast gets no more "oomph" than the rest of the stroke.If you do that ,the cast will collapse into a wiggly pile.Good luck w/ it.



I taught myself as a 9 y/o (46 years ago) and I can still remember the moment when I "got it".I stood on that driveway into the dark watching that loop unroll, just like Curt Gowdy and Lee Wulff did...or so I told myself.


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You said it all in the first sentence: "practice makes perfect." Asking someone online what you're doing wrong is like asking a blind person to analyze your golf swing. That said, fly casting is all about timing, and once you get it, you've got it.. Couple things that can't hurt: make sure your line is clean, and stretch it thoroughly before you start. Also, keep your leader on the short side to start out. The majority of the time, I fish a 10-12 foot leader on 7-9 wts, but that's too much leader for most rookies. You'll do better with half that. Don't worry about gear - sounds to me like your outfit is plenty good enough to learn on. Lacking a live mentor, just study the videos and practice, practice, practice. As mentioned above, keep your casts very short in the beginning and work your way up gradually. Distance isn't nearly as important as accuracy, and distance will come with time. There are no shortcuts. Everybody sucked when they started out.

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The darn line does not fly through the guides enough.. no torque it seems... I have studied countless fly casting videos on youtube and put in time "trying to do it right" and yet after all the false casting double hauls and perfect form the fly lands 20 feet in front me and my face gets so red I look like a veiny tomato..

 

For what it's worth ......

Q1. How many false casts do you make before laying the line?

Q2. When you lay the line, is the line straight/stretched out or all clumped together somewhere?

 

The action with surf casting usually starts with a slow smooth motion which then rapidly accelerates, the 'sinker's' momentum then takes over and it flies pulling line out behind it. This is basically all one movement.

 

With fly (SH), the process is completely different. A reasonable to good caster should really be able to cast all his flyline with (say) 3 false casts and a final laying movement. The 4 casts are generally using incrementally more line .... eg. first extracts 10ft, second extracts a further 20ft (30 feet now out), third extracts a further 30ft (60 feet now out) and the laying cast shoots out a further 40ft (100 feet now out) - all these distances are for explanation purposes. So, there isn't one huge effort but a number of smaller incremental efforts (and there shouldn't be much effort - that's the whole point, you want to be able to cast all day!)

 

Casting - it's the rapid deceleration of the rod at the end of each cast which results in more line being extracted (think of the motion to crack a whip without that final little pull back movement) - the momentum of the line already out the rod is what 'pulls' more line out.

 

As mentioned right at the beginning .... for what it's worth.

 

Sometimes a 4th grader explains things more effectively (easier to understand) to a 3rd grader than a professor does!

Any society that charges it's own children for knowledge, is doomed to fail.

Whilst intelligence is not affected by geography, it is influenced by education, opportunity and drive.   

Now is the time to change our attitude towards blues, next year may well be too late (Somebody listened :th: )
Member of the Yellow Eyed Devils
May you never have to fish to live, rather live to fish.

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Thanks for the tips everyone..

So its not that my leader is too long ey? :huh: so a 9ft 8 inch leader is normal?

I was sure that was the problem and it was too long.. :confused:

 

Oh well back to the fly casting videos..

I will let ya know how it turns out..

 

thanks everyone... I have no problem with practice.. being a professional guitar players I know practice makes perfect but I could swear it was something else cause I was doing it just like in the videos... and still no distance.. Hmmmmmm? :confused:

 

I gotta figure this out...

The Horizon Calls..........
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