Fly Casting

Fly Cast Friday - Simple Curves

How to do a Curve Cast with Carl McNeil

Simple Curve Casts

At times you’ll want to be able to throw a line around a corner – usually to get around an obstacle like a tree trunk or rock. And this is where your curve casts come in.  

Now, there are many ways to throw curves, some easy and some hard – and those different methods also give different curves from long deep curves to short sharp curves – even right angles. In this lesson we’re going to cover the most straightforward method to make a couple of easy curves to the left and right side. The principle we’re going to employ to make these curves is exactly the same as we used for the tuck casts – except rather than curving down and tucking under were going to curve either left or right.

Remember when we made the tuck cast I talked about overpowering the casts – well, we’re going to do exactly that for one set of these curves – which, surprisingly enough are called over powered curve casts.

To make an overpowered curve, or a curve that goes round to the left if your are a right hander here‘s what you do:

Rather than casting in the vertical plane you need to cast fairly horizontally and out to your side.

On the forward casts over power the cast and stop early and abruptly.  If you’ve applied enough power and stopped hard enough the loop will swing around past straight and curve back on it’s self  -while this is happening drop the rod and follow the line onto the water and you’ve got your curve. If you can double haul, this is a cast where a really good haul will help give you sufficient line speed to really overpower the cast and get it to kick around. 

If you want to really accentuate the curve, give a little pull back on the rod tip right after the stop. You’ve now really made a curve cast / mend. And and you can get some really tight curves doing this.

 

 

This tutorial, along with 9 other casts, the five essentials of fly casting and additional explanations are all included on our acclaimed 50 minute fly casting DVD Casts that Catch Fish available here

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