How to avoid getting skunked? I have a plan. A whole year of casting flies to the fish and never get skunked. Sounds good? It is simple. Don't go fishing - go and practice your fly casting. If you get a fish (or few), that's fine, if you don't - well no matter because you were only improving your casting skills. Never get skunked.
I have added links to the Fly Fishing Rabbi and the Trout Zone. Visit them if you have time to spare!
4 comments:
I think, even though I've only been fly fishing for two years, I have gotten lazy with my casting. A lot of my fishing does not actually require very technical casting (I spend most of the summer winging wooly buggers at smallmouth bass). So when I really do need to reach a tough spot or have one chance at a special fish, I am ill prepared. I do fully intend to practice more. I don't really know HOW to practice, or WHAT to practice, but I do intend to practice.
Best thing is that some skilled caster takes a look at your cast and tells how he sees it. Last spring a caster from my club toke a look at my cast and give me few pointers. He said, for example, that I try to do something extra at the end of forward cast that will not help anything. I was sort of like trying to reach extra distance but instead only shortened my cast.
His other advice was to practice. One can only became a good caster by practice. I did that. I put old tire about ten yards away and tried to hit it with my fly. Then 12 and 15 yards. Sometimes I hit it, sometimes not. My problem was that I always ended up trying to cast the fly as far as I could and ended up practicing more distance than accuracy. I’ll try to fix that this year.
Casting at grass is one thing. It really doesn’t help improve roll casting, underhand casting or spey casting. Those casts must be practiced at river.
Our neighbors across the street from us have a little pond. In the heat of summer I catch little sunfish on my 3-weight. Actually some of the sunfish are quite large, but most are tiny. Anyway, it is a good place to practice roll casting. I'll try and do that more.
I do the same thing on the rare occasions when i do practice, I practice distance, not accuracy. Then I get on the river and need an accurate, relatively short cast. Of course.
Do you do a lot of fishing with a spey rod? A show coming up in February here has a class, I was thinking about taking it. Looks like fun.
Ed, I don't have actual spey rod or lines, but when I first looked at spey casting videos I realised that I do perform similar casts while fishing. Spey casting is such a great collection of casting methods as they actually come handy at the river.
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