Video: Casting Heavy Flies into the Wind

The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast

James Hathaway

Bass, Fishing, Bonefish, Wilderness, Flyfishing, Trout, How To, Steelhead, Bluegill, Fly, Orvis, Sports, Salmon, Panfish, Education, Rosenbauer

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 13 April 2011

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to our first installment of "Ask a Fly-Fishing Instructor," starring our own Peter Kutzer. A couple weeks ago, we asked you to post some questions about your biggest casting problems. Reader "Phil" wrote, "Any tips you can give on casting heavily weighted flies would be appreciated," and "Dave R." asked a much more specific version of the same question:

When practicing with my 9wt with a piece of yarn tied to my leader (9' tied with 54" 40#, 18" 30# and 18" 15# tippet. All Maxima Ultra Green) I can cast consistently to 50' and beyond. But when I tie on a weighted fly ( clouser size 1 hook with small eyes) my line and leader seem to pile up and I have problems getting past 40'.

So, cameraman Eric Weisledder and I met Peter at the casting ponds beside the Orvis Retail Store in Manchester, Vermont, so he could offer some tips on casting a heavy fly in the wind. Aside from being an excellent caster and teacher, Peter turns out to be a natural in front of the camera. And check out the way he nonchalantly switches hands to demonstrate the oval cast.

If you've got more questions for Peter, post them on our Facebook page, and we'll address each casting problem in a new video.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	And the How's it going? My name's Peter Kutzer. I'm a fly casting instructor here in
0:19.2	orovis and the first question that we had in our asked the Kaskin instructor segment is dealing with weighted flies.
0:27.0	Phil and Dave R had a question about weighted flies and getting them out to a little bit longer distance.
0:33.0	So what I have is a weighted clouser minnow with lead eyes right here,
0:37.0	a size 2 on a 9 foot 12 pound liter right here.
0:42.0	Now, weighted flies, they can pose a little bit of a problem
0:45.4	when you're trying to cast especially when you're trying to get a little bit
0:47.5	more distance. A couple things you want to do is try to open up your loop a little bit.
0:51.6	By opening that loop you can keep that fly from
0:54.2	kind of collapsing and causing some issues when you're casting.
0:58.1	Okay, so I'm dealing with a weighted closer here and when I want to cast this fly in the wind first thing I want to
1:04.8	make sure I put my sunglasses on. All right this fly zipping around can still cause
1:10.0	some problems like that right there. So I'm going to take this fly, toss it in the
1:15.2	water, and now I can start that cast. When I make this cast, I want to try and
1:19.3	open up that loop a little bit. If I can make a real tight loop with this fly, I can start to get
1:25.8	tails and that fly can actually collapse, causing a lot of problems and just not rolling
1:31.4	out nicely. So what I want to try and do is actually open up that
1:34.5	loop a little bit. Opening up that loop is now going to keep that fly away from
1:39.8	that lower fly line and turn over much easier and you can now start to deliver that fly out to
1:45.5	those fish. When you go for that distance, just remember nice and easy, nice and smooth with
1:50.4	that haul and you can get that fly to roll right out there and turn over
1:55.6	and get out to those fish at a little bit longer distance. To open up your loop
	...

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