I got my butt handed to me recently when it came to what should be a very fundamental fishing skill: Casting.
Stop laughing.
Truth is, it’s not often that many of us are required to throw flyweight baits…into the wind…on a heavy-power rod…spooled with thick line…to paranoid fish….moving quickly through gin-clear water.
That’s what I had on my plate. I was down in the Florida Keys trying to cast a tiny shrimp weighted with a single, equally miniscule split shot to tailing bonefish and permit. The casts would have been a slam dunk with my 7-foot medium-light walleye rod, 6-pound mono and a 3/8-ounce jig.
But I wasn’t walleye fishing, and I had to watch helpless as a barnyard chicken as giant fish finned through the glassy shallows so close to my rodtip that it felt as though I could touch them with it.
But they were out of range, and I knew it.
It was so frustrating that I asked my guide, veteran
Capt. Mike Cyr, to explain just how to get more distance out of every cast, while maintaining pinpoint accuracy. You can view his tutorial in the video below.
(Note: Blog text continues below video player. Scroll down to continue reading)
Most of us will never spend much—if any—time on a flats boat like I did that day, but the humbling casting lessons I learned there will help me cast farther and more accurately whether I’m throwing a 1/32-ounce jig to spawning crappies or a giant Red Fin to schooling stripers.
--Ryan