Other than false expectations about the expense, the single biggest barrier to enjoying fly fishing is learning to cast a fly.

I bought my first fly rod and reel in 1985.  The guy who sold it to me assured me that fly casting was easy.  We stood in the middle of Cy’s sporting goods store while Cy proceeded to instruct me in the classic “10 o’clock, 2 o’clock” arm positions.  “Keep your elbow next to your body, and be sure to keep your wrist straight,” he said.  “That’s all there is to it!” 

Cy lied.

When I tried it later at home, confident in my newly gained knowledge, I hooked the back of my right ear.  Oh, not at first.  I didn’t hook anything the first 100 times because the line looked like a pile of pale green spaghetti on the lawn.  Sometimes the pile was in front of me, sometimes it was behind me.  What was most disheartening was that all the green piles, front or back, were within spitting distance of my feet.

My two-hour-long, teach-myself-to-flycast lesson ended when I snagged the fly on the back of my jacket, right up there between the shoulder blades in that spot you never can scratch.  I had to put the rod and reel on the ground next to the pile of line so that I could take off my jacket to remove the fly.  By this time, I was certain all the neighbors were looking out their windows and enjoying the spectacle.  It took all my willpower to keep from “accidentally” stepping on the damn thing and walking away.  So I did the next best thing; I calmly cranked all the line back onto the reel, carried the rod into the house, set it upright in my rod rack, and ignored it for 17 years.

In 2002, my wife’s best friend invited us to spend the July 4th weekend with her and her husband at their vacation home in Steamboat Springs.  Her son, Jason, whom I’ve known since he was a little kid, is a contractor in Crested Butte.  He and his girlfriend would be visiting that weekend, too.  When Jason heard we were invited, he called and suggested I bring a fly rod so that we could go fishing.

In everyone’s life, there are certain specific days you always remember.  Among them, for me, was the day in April of ’53 when my parents brought home my new baby brother, and I was no longer the center of the galaxy; the day in August of ’67 I got married; the November and February days in ‘78 and ‘81 when our children were born; and July 5, 2002, the day Jason helped me learn to cast a fly well enough to fool a 6” brook trout.

The cast wasn’t pretty, and it certainly wasn’t long, but it went approximately where I’d aimed, and I caught my first fish on a fly!

Five and a half years have gone by, and I’m still waiting for someone to describe my casting style as pretty.  Or lengthy.  But I’ve picked up a few concepts and tips about fly casting that may help you get started without a 17-year interruption.

First of all, forget all that misleading and unhelpful nonsense about clock faces and 10 and 2 o’clock positions.

Instead, think back to those heart-warming primary school days when the next step up from finger painting in art class involved long, skinny paint brushes and big jars of tempura paints.   Remember how you’d dip the bristles into that big jar, then holding the brush by the opposite end, flick paint on your best friend?

Think about your grip on the brush as you executed that maneuver.  You didn’t grab it like a baseball bat with your thumb wrapped tightly around the side; you held the brush firmly but lightly in your fingers and had your dirty little thumb resting right on top to assure deadly accuracy with the paint splatter.  That’s exactly how you should hold your fly rod.

You may or may not have had your elbow tucked to your side, but you certainly didn’t swing your arm in an arc from 2 o’clock to 10 o’clock.  And you didn’t let your wrist flop around.  You held the brush up in a relatively straight line from elbow to wrist to paint-dripping bristles, accelerated your fist in line with the victim, and then, as abruptly as possible, stopped your fist to launch the paint.   Worked every time, didn’t it?

A second painting-related analogy also might be helpful.  Think about the motion of your fist as you splattered your buddy.  Pretty straight line, wasn’t it?  Definitely more of a straight, piston-like motion than the arc inscribed by the tip of clock’s hour hand.  Think of the flycasting motion as painting the underside of a shelf, where you’re pushing and pulling the brush in a straight line, not waving the bristles around with a limp wrist.

That fun-filled paint splattering technique you mastered in first grade is almost exactly the motion you’ll use to cast a fly.

Unlike spinning or bait-casting, where the weight of the lure or terminal rig pulls line from the reel when you cast, in fly casting it’s primarily the weight of the line itself that “loads” (ie, stores energy in) the rod.  I say “primarily” because, even without line, the motion of casting will flex a fly rod.  As you add weight (the fly line) to the rod tip during that motion, you increase the amount of flex (ie, potential stored energy).

Your “goal” is to store just enough energy in the rod to propel the line, leader, and fly to your target.  It isn’t hard and it doesn’t take muscle strength because the rod will be doing almost all the work.  Your role is to provide the most efficient motion -- which you learned in first grade art class -- and rhythmic timing.

So how do you do that?

Let’s look at the basic overhead cast, which probably will serve 95% of your flycasting needs.  (As you advance in flycasting, you’ll add roll casts, self-mending casts, and other advanced techniques, but the basic overhead cast will still be the basis of your arsenal.)

If you have a fly tied to the end of your tippet, clip it off before you begin practice.  There’s no reason to add an element of danger to the threat of embarrassment.  Find an open grassy area with no trees or bushes in front of you or behind you.  Stand facing your target.  If it’s more comfortable for you, advance your opposite foot (left, if you’re right-handed) a little.  You want a relaxed, well-balanced stance.

Strip off about 10 feet of fly line from your reel, and pull it with the leader out through the rod tip.  With a limp wrist (the ONLY time you want a limp wrist :) ), flip the line and leader out in front of you so that it’s lying on the grass in a fairly straight line away from you, extended from your rod tip in the direction of the target.

Strip off an additional 15-20 feet of fly line and let it coil neatly at your feet where it won’t tangle.  Hold the line with your non-rod hand so that only the initial 10 feet of line plus leader are beyond the tip during the next step.

Now, keeping your wrist straight, BRISKLY bend your arm at the elbow until the rod is pointing up, and come to an ABRUPT STOP.  This motion should pull the line off the grass and propel it up through the air behind you.  As the line straightens out behind you, if you’ve been holding the rod firmly upright, the line will begin to bow (“load”) the rod in that backward direction.  The rod can’t “load” if you let the rod tip drift backward.  Some beginners find it helps to turn slightly in order to watch their backcast straighten out behind them.

As soon as the line is fully extended in the air behind you, and your rod is still bowing backward, accelerate your grip forward -- flick that paintbrush -- aiming at the horizon above your target.   In the same instant that you abruptly stop your forward motion, release your hold on the additional line lying at your feet.  The momentum of the flyline sailing toward the target will pull the additional line through the guides, lengthening the distance of your cast by the amount of slack you provided.

When you see the flyline straightening out in the air in front of you, slowly lower your rod tip and allow the flyline and leader to settle gracefully on the grass.

Congratulations.  You’ve just cast a flyline.

Don’t rush the process.  And don’t try to “muscle” it.  Fly casting is a rhythmic, relaxing process.  Pause after each stop to allow the line to extend fully and pull on the rod tip.  (You actually will learn to feel the pull as the rod “loads.”)  If you try to hurry the process and start the forward cast too soon, you’ll “crack the whip,” a mistake that’s easy to recognize because you’ll hear it!  It’s not uncommon for beginners to crack the whip so sharply that it snaps the fly off the end of the tippet.

Now let’s recap what you’ve done.

Picking the line up off the lawn and jerking it backward provided the initial “load” on the rod.  As the line sailed backward, you abruptly stopped the rod in a firm vertical position, which loaded the rod in that reverse direction as the line straightened out and pulled backward on the rod tip.  Pausing to let the line fully extend behind you, you then began your forward cast with the rod now “loaded.”  Your forward cast began by thrusting your rod hand forward, accelerating your fist toward the horizon above the target, then stopping abruptly to transmit the energy from the rod into the line.

Backcast = Accelerate.  Stop!  Pause (to let the line straighten in the air behind you). 
Forward cast = Accelerate. Stop!  Pause (as the line straightens out above the target).  Then lower the rod tip.

That’s all there is to fly fishing, except for the little parts about fly selection, entomology, “reading” the water, understanding fish behavior, and hooking and landing fish.

You’ve heard the joke about how the fall from the building didn’t kill the man; he died from the sudden stop at the end of the fall.  You could say something similar about flycasting.  It isn’t the accelerating motion of the rod that casts the line, it’s the sudden stop at the end of the stroke that propels the line forward.

Once you’ve “mastered” the basic casting motion and can routinely cast your fly 30 feet, your immediate thought as a red-blooded American male will be how to increase the distance.  The easiest way to go from 30 feet to 40 feet is to take four steps forward.  (That’s only partially facetious; sometimes that’s the very best answer because shorter casts require less force, and less force usually translates into a gentler presentation.)  The alternative is the “false cast.”

Instead of a single backcast followed by a single forward cast, add another “round trip”:  back and stop, forward and stop, back and stop, forward and stop and release.  Strip a few additional feet of line off your reel during each forward and backward motion, allowing the momentum of the straightening line to pull the added line through the guides until you have the desired length airborne.  Make sure you have nice crisp stops at the end of each accelerated motion, however, because if you don’t, the airborne line will sag and collapse to the ground.  And remember the analogy about painting the underside of a shelf; keep your grip moving back and forth in a straight line.

Flyfishing writers talk a lot about “tight loops,” but it’s not always clear what they mean or why tight loops are desirable.  As the flyline sails through the air, just before it straightens out, it forms the shape of the letter “u” as if the “u” were lying on its side.  A tight loop is simply the “u” with its two ends close together.  The opposite of a tight loop is an “open loop” with the two ends far apart.  Since one end of the loop is always the tip of the rod, in an open loop cast the fly sails high above the rod tip in its forward or backward journey.

Generally speaking, while there are some notable exceptions, you should try to achieve the tightest loops you can.  Why?  Physics.  In order to achieve a tight loop, you must move your gripping hand and the rod tip in a nearly straight line, first straight away from the target and then directly back toward the target.  Think back to the paint-loaded bristles in our paint-brush-flicking analogy.  You wouldn’t try to flick paint with a circular motion because that would dissipate the energy (and the paint droplets) in an arc.  A straight-line movement represents the most efficient transfer of energy from the fly rod to the fly.  It also is the only way you can count on hitting your target.

In addition to distance and accuracy, tight loops are less likely than open loops to be blown around by Nebraska’s winds.  Fly casters like to say tight loops punch through the wind.

The final aspect of this introduction to flycasting, which sounds more complicated than it is, is “hauling.”  You’ll hear and read about “single haul” and “double haul” casts.  So, what’s a haul?

A haul is just a quick tug on the flyline with your free hand immediately following the beginning of the forward cast or backcast motions.  Tugging down on the line in the first split second the rod stroke begins increases the effective load on the rod, and increased load ultimately translates into greater distance because the rod has more potential energy to transfer to the line.  A single haul cast has the tug only on the forward stroke.  In a double haul cast, you tug at the beginning of both the forward stroke and the backcast.

Don’t worry about trying either a single or a double haul until you’re comfortable with the basic casting technique and can add line during your false casts.  At first, hauling will remind you of rubbing your stomach while patting your head, but eventually it becomes second nature.

One final tip:  When you advance from the grassy knoll to the shoreline, and you have a sharp hook on the end of your line, wear sunglasses.  They provide good eye protection, and they’ll make you harder for others to recognize when the fly sticks in the back of your jacket.