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Casting Tip: Drift vs Creep

August 3, 2020 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Lori-Ann Murphy for many years. She is a terrific guide and all around fun person to know. She recently posted a casting tip that stuck with me. Her explanation of one of the mistakes many students and even good casters make is splendid advice.

Casting …..by Lori-Ann Murphy
Drift away!
The other day in my casting and fishing I became acutely aware that I was rushing my cast. This becomes evident when you don’t see what you want to on the delivery side of things. And this usually happens when we haven’t been fishing enough. We want to see a nice tapered leader turnover a balanced tippet holding the fly. Creep. That’s the word. We tend to “creep” our forward cast in anticipation of getting our fly to the fish. I imagine those of you float fishing to hatches with feeding trout might recognize the situation.

Al Kyte was a very important teacher in my fly fishing. Al was a basketball coach at UC Berkeley and also keen on fly fishing – especially understanding the cast. He studied Steve Rajeff and Lefty Krey. He came up with that on their short cast they had the same casting style. Which was very interesting because grown ups were having big fights over casting style as FFF now FFI found its way. In any case, Al taught me about “drift.”

“Just think about your rod tip moving back just an inch after your stop.” Moving the rod tip back as the fly line unfolds behind you after your stop is the exact opposite of creep. If we move our rod forward just a fraction of an inch sometime too soon – ugly cast. So go ahead and practice drifting with dry flies at first. Make sure you keep your tip in the same plane – don’t let it drop. Time slows down in this move. If you are hauling line – let that line fly behind you and then grab the line up by the first guide and pull hard with your line hand and keep your rod hand nice and relaxed with a proper grip to your snappy stop. When you are ready, move on to streamers and look out. By the time fall hits you’ll be deadly.

Filed Under: Cool Tips, Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing Instruction Tagged With: casting, creep, drift, Lori-Ann Murphy

My 12 “go to” trout flies in 2019

December 27, 2019 By Tom Sadler Leave a Comment

During this post Christmas, pre-New Year lull I started working on reorganizing my fly boxes. It is a semi seasonal ritual that I undertake as my days on the water guiding start to reveal the flaws in my previous attempts.

As I contemplated the various organizational options, my mind wandered off and started thinking about the flies I used the most often. Before that fleeting recollection vanished, I wrote them down here.

  • Parachute Madam X
  • Parachute BWO
  • Parachute Pheasant Tail
  • Japanese Beetle
  • Kreelex
  • Golden Retriever
  • Slump Buster
  • Conehead Wooly Bugger
  • Jig head Gold Ribbed Hares Ear Nymph
  • Jig head Pheasant Tail Nymph
  • CK Nymph
  • Guides Choice Nymph

These are what I used in no particular order or frequency other than I grouped them, dries, streamers, and nymphs. The sizes, weight and colors varied depending on location and conditions. And there were other patterns that I used as location and conditions dictated a change from my “go tos.” But day in and day out, these were the patterns I turned to, because they consistently caught fish for my clients.

Filed Under: Cool Tips, Fly Fishing, Fly Fishing Instruction, Mossy Creek Fly Fishing Tagged With: flies, trout

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Politics

Insurrection most foul

Gerson’s article, “The U.S. must punish sedition — or risk more of it” captures much of what is going through my mind at this moment.

The post-election political theater has jumped the shark.

BLUF: Time to starve the conspiracy whack jobs and Trump sycophants of oxygen.

The Threat to Democracy is Real

“We opposed Trump because we recognized that what he stood for is an existential threat to the American experiment in constitutional democracy.”

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