Dry fly presentation, when to use what slack line or presentation cast?

[Flyfisherfrance]

Hi!
Ive been watching videos on the wiggle cast, pile cast and the reach cast and I was wondering how you guys use these casts on the water.

On one site I also read about the reach and wiggle cast. So reaching and wiggling at the same time. Is this the best cast of them all? To get a good angle with the reach and alot of slack with the wiggles.

Another question about the pile cast: Do you experience it being too slow to get the fly on the surface when fishing faster waters or is it working good?

What cast do you use with complex currents between you and the fish and why?

And overall I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on presentation casts in various situations.
Also videos, articles, threads on the topic is very appreciated

Thanks,
Flyfisherfrance

 

[silver creek]

Hi!
Ive been watching videos on the wiggle cast, pile cast and the reach cast and I was wondering how you guys use these casts on the water.

On one site I also read about the reach and wiggle cast. So reaching and wiggling at the same time. Is this the best cast of them all? To get a good angle with the reach and alot of slack with the wiggles.

Another question about the pile cast: Do you experience it being too slow to get the fly on the surface when fishing faster waters or is it working good?

What cast do you use with complex currents between you and the fish and why?

And overall I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on presentation casts in various situations.
Also videos, articles, threads on the topic is very appreciated

Thanks,
Flyfisherfrance

Buy a copy of Presentation by Gary Borger if you can find one in France. I think it is the best book to answer your questions. It costs about 3 to 4 times now what it cost when it was first published.

https://www.amazon.com/Presentation-Gary-Borger/dp/0962839256

Technically these are IN THE AIR MENDS and NOT CASTS. The difference is that the rod motion for a mend AFTER the rod STOP. The rod motion for cast (like a curve cast, steeple cast, etc) occurs BEFORE the rod stop. But like a lot of terms in fly casting, their common usage is technically incorrect.

Short answers

The Reach Cast is most often used when the water between you and the fish is flowing FASTER than the water that the fish is feeding in. Most often this is when the fish is feeding near shore in the slow water and you are closer to the middle of the river. So you reach cast upstream to place the leader and line upstream on the faster flow.

YouTube

The Wiggle Cast is used when there are both slower and faster currents between you and the feeding fish. The wiggle cast places slack line IN BOTH DIRECTIONS so the complex current will have a lot of slack in BOTH directions because drag occurs in BOTH directions when casting voer both SLOWER and FASTER currents.

YouTube

The Pile cast and a Puddle cast are often confused as the same cast/mend. Here is Jason Borger describing when he used the puddle cast:

Sexyloops - Going Big for Small

"The next cast was what I was should have made on the first try. The line unrolled high, mostly up-and-over the river-rocks, and the leader puddled softly into the pool’s upper currents. I waited...... Before I could even react, the leader jumped tight and it was “fish on!”

The Puddle Cast sometimes called a pile cast in Europe. In this cast you do a high forward cast with a wide loop. then you immediately drop the rod tip to the water to "kill" the cast. The leader will collapse in a pile or puddle of slack. Combine that with a right reach mend and and then keep adding mends until you need to follow the line with the rod across your body to the left to extend the drift. That series of casts, and mends will give you the longest drift.

The puddle or pile cast is the best cast when there are conflicting and unpredictable currents such as rises in an eddy or whirlpool.
This is a graphic of the puddle cast. In the graphic, the cast is performed straight which will lay slack along the entire cast, but what we want is most of the slack at the end of the cast. Aiming the cast high over the target and dropping the rod tip piles the line up at the end, especially if you have a wide loop that does not extend fully collapses on itself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6uHddBAH7g

 

[Flyfisherfrance]

Thanks alot silver creek! I will check out that book!

 

[dillon]

9781571880017: Mastering the Spring Creeks: A Fly Angler's Guide - AbeBooks - John Shewey: 1571880011

You asked some very good and important questions regarding dry fly presentation. They indeed require the in depth explanations found only in the writings and demonstrations of an expert. Above is a book written by John Shewey which is in my angling library. Particularly interesting are his chapters on angles of delivery. One must be able to present from all angles of the clock. My preference is a downstream side angle. However, sometimes this angle is not possible or the most effective in apppropriately manipulating the fly into the feeding lane.

Last summer on our annual dry fly fishing trip S&S and I experienced many memorable risers. Some of them we caught some ate the fly but were not landed and some were just not catchable because their chosen feeding lie was next to impossible.

One of my most memorable fish was feeding at the downstream tip of an island on a large western tailwaters during a pmd hatch. The fish was positioned on a current seem that funneled the insects into a very narrow lane. I worked this fish from literally every angle, starting with my preferred position, above and to its right and moving counter clockwise around it. Try as I might I could not achieve a good float into its lane. That is until I finally got into position below and to the right of the riser. Then I was able to land the fly about three feet above the fish and directly into the seam so that the fly funneled to the fish as if it was a natural. And then the big girl ate!

Aside from the above scenario there at times when fish are feeding in currents where only a very short drag free float can be achieved. It then when a precise presentation and a mid air wiggle is extremely important. The fly must land with slack in the leader as it will be pulled straight and create drag within a few inches of the flies float. In some situations an on the water mend is not possible.

There are some threads with very good discussions on this forum regarding the intricacies of dry fly presentation. It's a fascinating subject. Slack lines...

 

[brokeoff]

Hi!
Ive been watching videos on the wiggle cast, pile cast and the reach cast and I was wondering how you guys use these casts on the water.

On one site I also read about the reach and wiggle cast. So reaching and wiggling at the same time. Is this the best cast of them all? To get a good angle with the reach and alot of slack with the wiggles.

Another question about the pile cast: Do you experience it being too slow to get the fly on the surface when fishing faster waters or is it working good?

What cast do you use with complex currents between you and the fish and why?

And overall I’m interested in hearing your thoughts on presentation casts in various situations.
Also videos, articles, threads on the topic is very appreciated

Thanks,
Flyfisherfrance

Where in France are you located? I can't get that place, and those fish, out of my mind.

 

[dr d]

hi,


as the better streches in France are very pressed you´ll need the slowed down angular cast of italian magliocco.

barrio lines had some cd´s of him in his shop.


good luck

thomas


p.s.i wrote about it in a former similiar thread 1-2 years ago.

 

[Bigfly]

I second your good questions....
My advise is to learn each cast separately, before combining them....
I think when combining these casts improperly, you get even more bad habits.
I often "stack" casts together....like an overhand cast, and a reach cast....this isn't that hard, unless you you change your overhand cast by gesturing to the reach before you come to a stop on the overhand.
If you do, you get a slider or curve cast. Which is handy, but not what you initially wanted.
After you dial in each cast separately, you can stack them in different combinations.
A pile cast/ downstream reach. Or a rebound wiggle/upstream reach...Snap-t/reach....rollcast/rebound/reach
There tons of combinations. .... play a bit with other combos, but don't blur the lines....make each cast cleanly before adding others together.
If you don't keep each cleanly done, you won't get reproducible results.
The goal for our spooky fish, is do the right cast perfectly the first time.....no second tries.
Accuracy over distance every time. Who cares how far you cast, if you aren't dead on accurate?
False casting multiple times over fish is something out of the propaganda past.
Put that first cast (whatever kind) right in the drift, for best results.

Jim

 

[sweetandsalt]

Yes, fffrance, you asked a good and important question and got a bunch of knowelegabe replies. My proposal, and Silver creek already touched on this, is recognize and separate live line casting from slack, fed line articulation. Also, a bigfly proposed, do not cast over your rising fish, cast parallel to it and only upon presentation cast to it.

So, in the Reach Cast, you make your nice tight looped cast and, upon the forward cast stop, then you rotate your rod tip at a 90° angle to the fishes position while simultaneously feeding slack from your line hand...not line from the cast. Assuming you have generated suitable gravity defying line speed, at this point you can move your rod tip horizontally to add differing sized amplitudes of current avoiding slack into the presentation. This presentation technique with its infinite variables potentially further enhanced via on-water mends, all controlled by you via your rod tip is the foundation of fly first into the feeding lane dry fly fishing. Certainly experiment and add to your repertoire of methods, however, I discourage most applications of the recoil back of dead slack line pile type casts as they land upon the water without suitable control and noisily. Perhaps in a riffle but never on more technical water.

 

[silver creek]

S&S makes a very important point in his post above. You HAVE to add line to account for the extra line in the mend(s) or else your cast will be short of the target. So you need to practice being accurate with the fly placement while SIMULTANEOUSLY adding the line for the mend as in the illustration below.

 

[Bigfly]

Or, cast past your aim point and no slip is needed.....
The cast will land short of the aim point, but smack on where you wanted it to land.
But either cast will work with practice.
When you aim directly at a log or some other static point, then Silver is of course correct, you must slip line while in the casting stroke. If you try to put the fly right against the object, and THEN mend, the fly will be pulled away.
So the slip part is key so you don't need the follow up mend.
This works great when trying to get a drift next to a log.......and all along the length of the log.
I think I use this cast more than any other......
I say a good drift is mandatory, but not with a followup mend necessarily...if you include the mend in the cast.

Jim

 

[wjc]

Thanks for this thread flyfisherfrance and all those responding. I love these threads. Makes me nostalgic for my teen years when my summers were spent with either a fly rod, baseball glove, or lawn mower my hands dawn till after dark. Those days were in Maine after moving north from Florida and I was learning that Maine rivers and brook trout were different from Glades bass on big poppers. They were not very spooky in those days, but not as dense as glades bass either. Just getting the fly over them in fast waters took finesse and tricky casting.

I read what I could find in the magazines about casting and just tried everything I'd read about and more things I dreamed up. It was a real learning experience and a lot of fun - especially when it actually worked. I can't remember ever practicing fly casts if I wasn't on the water though except when I got my first rod a few years earlier one Christmas.

But the frustrations of winding up on the wrong side of the boulder or in the alders ahead or the puckerbrush behind were not stomp and swear and kick the muskeg then; just swear a bit, fix the tippet and tie on another fly and try again.

I haven't done that kind of fishing in over 20 years now, and it would take a week's fishing at least just to get feeling halfway comfortable again. But I love reading posts about it, and re-living fish caught in spots that were difficult to get a fly to that would float long enough and naturally enough to elicit the bite.

So thanks again for the thread. Presentation is everything.