While fly fishing I find many instances where a slack line cast is critical to presenting the fly correctly. Common presentation casts call for a wiggling action of the rod tip. This action provides nicely shaped wiggles or curves in the fly line. These curves help present the fly without the nasty drag that we all try to avoid. I like to use many different casts, in fact, sometimes I choose to use a specific cast for it’s challenge or beauty. In this article we’ll cover the “Pull Apart” cast. It’s a good cast to use when you need a lot of slack as you can see in the photo. I call it the Pull Apart cast because you essentially pull the bottom leg of the loop down which pulls the cast apart.

Pull Apart Cast:

1. Make a forward cast at an upward angle.
2. After you have formed the loop, drop your elbow down and flick your wrist forward.

See the animated view.

That’s it. The first step causes slack line due to the upward angle. The second step makes the slack more extreme, by producing a vertical downward aerial mend combined with a charge of energy sending the line backwards; a cast within a cast.

Experiment with this cast and make variations - you may be surprised by the results.

Leo Vensel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 10:26 am and is filed under General, How To, Fly Casting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.