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The True Cast: How would you describe fly fishing?
I’m often asked how I’d categorize fly fishing. Is it a sport? Tradition? A game? A hobby? That’s a loaded question, and I’ll give you my answer (which I’ve landed on after years of careful deliberation on the water whilst waving a stick) in a bit. But for grins, let’s tackle a few… Sport. Hmmm.…
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The True Cast – It’s (almost) all about presentation
What happens after your fly hits the water is usually as important (or more so) than the cast you made to get it there in the first place. If a fly behaves naturally, a fish will be more inclined to want to eat it than if it behaves unnaturally. So, for dry flies as an…
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The True Cast – When you’d rather watch
I like to watch people catch trout more than I like to catch them myself. Don’t get me wrong. I still dig catching trout, and casting flies… I crave watching that slow, deliberate slurp. I love challenging myself and solving the puzzles that trout fishing presents. I like getting “refused” and figuring out what happens…
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The True Cast – the thumb
An amazingly simple casting tip that fixes the two most common mistakes in seconds Sometimes the best tips are the most basic, because they’re easy to implement and hard to forget. I got this one from the late, great Dan Stein who guided on the Bighorn River in Montana: If you keep your thumb of…
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The True Cast – How in the (heck) did I ever end up here?
If there’s one lesson I’ve learned from a professional career writing stories about fly fishing all over the world—and editing magazines that revolve around the same subject—it’s that fly fishing is less about the fish you might catch and more and about the interesting people you meet along the way, as well as the wild…
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The True Cast – All you really need to know about the double haul
(It isn’t as tricky as you might think.)
(It isn’t as tricky as you might think.) Being able to “double haul” as you cast a fly rod is an important key to adding distance to your cast. But there’s a lot of confusing misinformation out there that only confounds and intimidates people as they attempt to learn double hauling. Myth #1 is that…
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The True Cast – Small trout make the world go around
We might all agree that since the dawn of fly-fishing time, the benchmark for “success” has, for better or worse, revolved around “catching the big one.” When you tell your spouse, friends or anyone else you had a great day on the river, what’s the first question you get asked to substantiate your claim? “Anything…
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