When I was a kid, the first fly-fishing technique my grandfather ever shared with me was “dapping.” Rather than burden a 10-year-old with all the details of a complex fly cast, he would simply pull about three feet of fly line through the tip-top and put a hopper or some high-floating dry fly on my tippet.
“Just flip it upstream and keep an eye on it,” he would say. With a 9-foot rod in hand, it was pretty simple to just keep the fly on the water—I didn’t have to worry about drag or all those crazy conflicting currents that come with fishing small water.
I still use this technique today—a lot. In tight quarters, it’s very useful, especially where the backcast is limited. But it’s also a great technique for tenkara anglers and, as I noted above, new anglers who don’t have the casting experience, but are interested in catching trout on the fly.
— Chris Hunt