Learning how to cast a fly rod is a learned technique and we here at Minturn Anglers in the Vail Valley pride ourselves in making fly fishermen better.
One of the biggest struggles that can follow fly fishermen around is poor line management skills. Day in and day out, the trials of managing slack line off the water during drifts or before the casting stroke seem to really beat people up. This can be real puzzling to your guide as it is not the expensive chuck of graphite complicating matters, it is a pair of hands they have supposedly been familiar with since the womb.
Slack is every fly fishermen’s arch rival. Leave slack on the water before a cast or a hook set and the fly rod will not work very well. Guides commonly begin teaching line management by having their peep relearn clapping their hands without looking, which sadly, most humans fail to do during fly fishing trips
After the delivery of the fly and mend, there can often be some slack in the system. To combat this, fly fishermen are taught to deliver the fly line from the casting control hand to a finger on the casting hand during the drift. This can happen several times during presentation so your hands are forced to connect and disconnect over and over, all day long without glancing down. Every time an angler looks down to find their hands the rod tip hops up into the air and effectively ruins the presentation they had begun.
Want to be better at this “impossible”part of fly fishing?
It will cost you a quarter.
Begin by placing a quarter in our right hand , pinched between your thumb and fore finger. Now without looking, reach over with your left and and take the quarter from the right hand. Now without moving your right hand, have the left hand come back over and re deliver the quarter to the right, or casting hand. Don’t look down! Ever! Sounds easy huh? I have had peeps practice this at boat ramps and at first they think I am crazy, but trust me they fail this basic movement day in and day out. I have even jokingly bet a C Note that they can’t pull this move off cleanly once I make the quarter the fly line. Everyone I have ever taken out would owe me cash.
We love making you guys happy with fish and fly rods.
Want to make your guide happy? Figure out where your hands are before grabbing a fly rod, it only costs a quarter.