Casts For Wets And Nymphs (4 of 14)

Tom: Before we move on to the more complicated issue of fishing nymphs, let's visit Pete Kutzer for some helpful tips on casting with a strike indicator and weight on your leader.

Pete: Through all these presentations I've been talking about staying in the straightest line possible. We want to stay in that nice tight, straight path. That's going to keep that loop nice and tight. When you're dealing with heavy flies or wind resistant flies, or great big poppers, or maybe you have an indicator rig with a lot of weight on the end of that leader, that's when we might want to actually start to travel in a little bit of an arch.

That's going to help open up those loops and prevent that heavy fly or that big popper from colliding with the rod. I have seen rods break, just by a piece of split shot coming forward. So we want to open up that loop by traveling a little bit of an arch. That's going to help get that fly still out to those fish, but keep that fly well away from that rod and away from that line.

Tom: Another great way to cast nymphs and wet flies is called the water load, where you let the river be your back cast.

Sometimes, if you've got a lot of wind, if you've got a lot of brush, you've got two flies, and an indicator and a weight on your leader, and you don't want to be casting all over the place, you can do what's called a water load. What you do, it's very simple, you wait until the line drags behind you. You pick up the rod tip and flick a cast forward. So you keep doing that.

As soon as the line drags behind you, especially with nymph fishing, you don't need to be that super delicate, just pick it up and make a forward cast. That way you don't have to have your line going back and forth in the air and your fly is tangling and getting in trees and things like that.

It's not all about catching giant fish. Sometimes just swinging a wet fly through a riffle and catching small trout is a lot of fun. It doesn't always have to be a monster. As you can see, even this little rainbow is bending that six weight rod.