Beyond Competence, Part I
MidCurrent.com

by Macauley Lord
photos by Craig Uecker

IF YOU CAN FINALLY CAST the fly out to about 45 feet comfortably, shoot some line, and make a decent roll cast, you are officially a competent fly caster. Now what? What do the experts do that you don't? How did that guy hook all those fish while you were struggling to get your first of the day, using the same fly? Clearly, these questions have multiple answers, but the most important is that the expert can put his fly right where he wants it almost every time. He puts it there with whatever slack he may need. And, he does so in very little time and with few blown casts. To use a golf analogy, he has played the same water as you, but he has done it in fewer strokes.

In this column and the next, we'll focus on some of the little casting things that experts do that add up to more fish. We'll start with the pickup and backcast. In the next installment, we'll look at sidearm casting and shooting on the reach cast.

The Slide Pickup

This technique could also be named the "shoot pickup" because you allow line to slide out through the guides — as when you shoot — during the pickup. Why do this? Because it's a stroke saver. By sliding line out during the pickup, you extend the amount of line beyond the tip for the backcast. This saves you a stroke on the forward or backcast. And that extra mass of line, as it unrolls during the backcast pause, will exert more pull on the line if you want to shoot during either the backcast or forward cast pause (or both). With more line shooting out during either pause, you'll save roughly one more stroke. So the slide pickup, done correctly, can save you two strokes. Your fly spends more time in the water and less time in the air, where it's unreachable by hungry jaws.

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