Refusals Are Kind Of A Drag.

When I picked on Double Haul's shortcomings back on July 6th, I said I would talk further about eliminating drag which I consider to be one of the two biggest causes of refusals. Drag exists when the fly is moving at a different rate of speed than the water it is floating on. Everyone's flies drag on almost every cast. The goal is to have your fly moving in harmony with the current the entire time the fish you are casting at sees it. If you are blind casting you should pick up your fly whenever you detect drag.  

How do you know if your fly is dragging? That is the easy part. Watch the bubbles, (foam), next to it. The bubbles are not dragging. If your fly is not moving exactly in concert with the nearest bubble, you've got drag. I've actually made what I thought were good casts only to watch the fly do a little wiggle, dart a short distance upstream and then race downstream trying to catch the bubble it started out next to. 

What causes drag? Variations in the current speed between you and the fly, (make a cast across the downstream eddy created by a rock if you want an example).

How can you eliminate drag? You can't, but cleaning up bad casting habits and learning some new casts that help cut down on drag will increase your chances of presenting drag free floats to feeding fish.  

What casts reduce drag? The reach cast is the most basic and perhaps easiest to learn. There are several casts that go by different names, (stop, dump, pile, haystack), all of which are designed to put slack in your line which lets your fly drift with the current. Sorry but that long beautiful cast that straightens out and lands the fly right in the trout's feeding land is the culprit when it comes to drag. With no slack in your line the slightest variation in current speed between you and the fly will create drag.

Watch a few videos and try out the various techniques, some stop the rod abruptly which causes the to line to recoil creating slack, others create slack by pulling sharply on the line with your off rod hand. Getting slack in the line is fairly easy, getting slack in the line and putting the fly in the fish's feeding lane is just a tad bit harder. Watching the videos will show you how it's done, but learning how to do it consistently, takes hours of practice casting. I would suggest that you spend time blind casting the casts designed to cut down on drag. Pick a target spot on the water and see how far above and below the spot you can float your fly without drag.

Line mending is another way to eliminate drag, but done incorrectly often makes matters worse. If the water near you is moving faster than the water where the fish is rising a straight cast will produce instant drag. Mending the entire line after the cast has landed seldom works as it tugs on the fly and initiates drag. What you can do is create slack at the end of your rod so that the rod is not pulling on your fly. You have to be proactive not reactive to succeed in this venture. First you need to hold lots of line in your free hand. Second, as soon as you finish the cast start wiggling the rod tip either up and down or side to side which will pull out the line held in your free hand. With a little practice you can float a fly, drag free, to Callicoon as long as you can wiggle out line faster than the current is flowing.