[fisshman26]

Just wondering what kind of distances are being reached and with what kind of lines. I ask this because of an old thread that talked about a uk casting contest where the winning cast was somthing like 43 yds. Lets make it from the reel to the fly and make it your best average distance cast, ie. what you can hit consistently.

 

[fredaevans]

With a dry line, 90 to 110 feet ... with a

sink tip (length/wt of the tip makes a huge difference) maybe 60-70 feet plus leader. The Jedi Masters on the board that i know of(Dana, Steve and Wey) can strip everything off the reel and flow the line cast after cast. Others, I'm sure, can do the same, but I've never watched them 'do their thing.'

As to lines, it doesn't seem to make huge difference, with a few notable exceptions of rod/line combinations.
fe

Damn, forgot to add the obvious.... sheesh.

Length of cast is not the question; it's what you do with it out there that counts. So your out 120 feet plus leader ... how much of this can you mend to keep your fly in the "grove." These guys can mend out to 100+ feet and keep the fly in the seam.

Love to be able to do that at anything approaching what these fellows can do with ease. Maybe before I die; doubt it though.

 

[Dana]

In his recent letter to me (soon to be published on the Spey Pages) Ed Ward makes some excellent points about distance casting:


“As a group, fishermen have a universally notorious reputation for exaggeration, and it is very well deserved. 100’+ fishing casts are like 20 pound plus steelhead.. ... there are far, Far, FAR fewer in actual existence than one tends to hear about. Here are some of the reasons why-- - -
- Distances on the water are deceiving, especially the deeper that one is wading. Standing submerged waist high in the river makes an 85’ cast look like 100’.
- On casts exceeding 90’, line curvature, squiggles, and slack, can constitute 10 to 20 percent of the actual length of line that is thrown. In addition, if the belly of the flyline touches down on the water BEFORE the fly, then even more line can be subtracted from the true distance of the cast.
- Some people crave recognition, and in their quest to achieve it, will justify as right actions with less-than-honest credibility. Raising the rod and pulling back on it at the end of a cast to "slip" leftover line out onto the water, does not add to the distance of the cast.”


If we take a 120ft Spey line and 15ft leader and lay out the whole thing from the reel, many of us will say “I cast 135ft!” rather than “I cast the whole line!” which is a little different. I agree with Ed that the actual measured distance of a cast is going to be something less than the length of line thrown due to squiggles etc. In casting competitions competitors are casting along a measured line of some sort so an accurate measure of the actual distance (where the fly lands) can be made; when we’re out throwing lines around it’s definitely less accurate. I can't honestly say with any accuracy how far I can cast (never measured) but I do know how much line I can throw, which is to say that the actual distance (in keeping with Ed's observations) is probably less than my ego would like it to be.

Distance casting is great fun and can help you become a better caster at any range, but I still manage to hook most of my steelhead within 50ft of the beach (even on the Thompson). As someone much wiser than I has pointed out, “a 30ft cast to where the fish are is a lot better than a 70ft cast to where they aren’t!”

As far as consistency goes, most of the time I try to consistently cast a little farther than where I think the fish are likely to be, and I'm usually wrong about this more often than I'm right, which is pretty consistent I guess!
:chuckle:

 

[Bob Pauli]

As a new spey caster with two steelhead seasons learning I have found the following re distances cast with spey rods:

9 weight, 14 foot rod with Rio WindCutter Tips 8/9/10 line:
?floating line: 14 foot rod + 54 foot WindCutter belly and tips + 14 foot [typical] leader = 82 feet, without shooting any line.

?sink tip line: same as above with 4 foot leader [vs. 14'] gives 72 foot distance.

As a person progresses, he or she will first shoot one rod length of line, then two lengths, etc.

I have no significant experience with other than Rio WindCutter lines, so would ask the more experienced casters for that information.
--------
vaporizers
________
Honda CD125

 

[FlyFishAR]

Casting Distance

For what it's worth....While I was at the Championships in Sweden this summer, we all had a few drinks after the cometition was over. A couple of the guys were casting in the lake out behind the bar. One of the Belgians (a by stander) asked if he could cast the rod. He pulled all the line off the reel, streatched it a little and made a standard over head cast to the backing.

Now the good part..........He swirled the line in front of him to gather some slack. Threw a "D" loop behind him and roll cast the entire fly line with a 9 foot rod. Someone elses rod and line, I was "fairly" impressed.:whoa:

John

 

[roballen]

Squiglies???? nooooooo my casts always land straight as an arrow

Ok call me boreing but what does distance have to do with anything. Sure it's fun to throw a long line but 80 feet is perfect and covers every fish I need to catch. Guess I just care abiut fishing and don't care about casting. Will I ever be a great caster? probably not. Will i becme a great fisherman? I hope so.