3. Casting angles for Euro Nymphing (3 of 20)

[George] Caught a brookie. Another one. A little bit better one. Euro nymphing works best on shorter casts. Here, George explains why angling the cast upstream is a great way to fish. - So if you're going to fish straight upstream, one of the advantages with this technique, it allows you to get close because this is a short-range presentation. European nymphing, because basically we're keeping all the line leader off the water, we have a limited range and usually within 20, 25 feet is the maximum range. And by staying in position yourself directly behind the fish, in essence, it usually allows you to get closer to a fish. The other advantage of casting upstream with this technique, with the Euro technique, it allows you to make excellent placement of your line leader parallel to the flow of current because what we're trying to do often is get the flies down deep in water column and the way we achieve a quick penetration or a quick depth of the flies, just cast it in line with the current. When you cast across currents or down across, your flies immediately go under tension, they begin to swing. But with this presentation what we're trying to do is get down deep and this is why this technique is so useful in big waters like this where you have raging rapids and fast pocket water, it allows you to penetrate the water comb fast, but the way you do that often is by casting in line with the current you intend to fish. The great thing about this is because basically, there's very little surface drag on the water. The only drag that's occurring is a thin leader right below the slider that's on the water. And as a result, you're enabled to fish lighter weight flies. In water like this, if you're going to be fishing indicators where you have a large buoyant object on the water, you would have to put a lot of weight on that indicator or on the rig because you got to drag the indicator on the water, but with this, the only drag that's occurring is essentially the leader so it essentially allows you to fish the same water as you came with the indicator but because of the less surface drag, you're going to be fishing far less weight. One of the things, you know, my mentor Mr. Humphrey has always talked about is just fish in front of you first. So before you even step in the water, put the fly in the water where you would initially step in, and then you can work your way out. But as I'm working my way out slightly, I'm not casting across stream. All I'm doing is just changing my body position so it just may be one or two side steps. But again, what I'm looking to do is every current, every seam I'm intending to fish, I'm basically trying to move the rod to parallel with the flow of water, so I can get that perfect inline presentation. So we're going to work in close first, and then we can work our way out. And then we'll take a couple of steps upstream and just kind of zigzag back and forth all the way through the presentation. And the other great thing about this presentation is this, it gives you the ability to swing the flies. There are times of the year, especially like back home in central PA where I live, most of our hatches occur April, May, and June. I would probably say over half my strikes during those months occur on the swing. So with this, we can dead drift or get the flies down deep on the bottom right here, and then at the end of the presentation, I almost always swing, no matter even what the season is because there's usually always some fish, just as soon as that fly goes vertical, often triggers a strike. And then if there's no fish on the end of the presentation, the swing basically sets you up for your forward casting stroke so there's no false casting. So we just drift, swing, tension, and then we have our presentation. And that's, in my opinion, one of the beautiful things about this technique compared to like indicator fishing, it's relatively easy to do. The casting, in my opinion, is a lot easier. It's not really casting as much as it is lobbying because essentially, we have a weighted object, all we're doing is just pulling that weight object to the air. So all we need here is attention on the backcast, the handout in front of us, and just flipping. Very little movement is actually needed to make this cast work.