Fishing Techniques:
Dive Right In
Sinking lines are a fact of life when fishing BTB. But for many people, casting a sinking line is an exercise in frustration. Here are some tips and tricks for dealing with sinking lines.
Underlying Concepts
Much of the difficulty experienced in casting sinking lines is due to the fact that they cannot simply be lifted from the surface like a floater. A reasonably proficient caster can easily pick up 45-feet of floating line from the surface, make a back cast and then shoot out a bunch more line. This is not the case with sinking lines.
The first order of business with a sinking line is to bring the line to the surface in preparation for the cast. To do this, a significant portion of the line will have to be stripped in. With a weight-forward taper or a shooting head, (which is essentially the first 30-feet of a weight – forward line), the heavy head portion of the line will have to be stripped in at least as far as the rod tip.
Once the head portion is at least partially inside the rod tip, the next step is to make a roll cast. When you do it correctly, the roll cast will literally propel the head portion of the line up from the water column, and lay it out flat on the surface (at least for a moment) in front of you. You can only begin the casting sequence when this section of fly line is on the surface.
What I do next is make a back cast, the easiest back cast I can make. This is where many people get into trouble. You have to understand that sinking lines behave differently than floaters. They are dense, they are heavy, and unlike floaters, they do not slow down as the back cast begins to unfold. Achieving a modicum of line speed on the back cast is important when using floating lines. With a sinking line, however, you want to make a very easy back cast. The line is already travelling quite fast and you do not want to speed things up even more. If you do, you won’t be able to control the line.
Bear in mind that the fly line makes a 180- degree change in direction from the back cast to the forward cast. Since this dense, relatively small diameter, line is already zipping through the air on the back cast, you don’t want to add to this speed. Doing so will greatly accelerate the transition the line has to make from the back cast to the forward cast. As it is, the transition from back cast to forward cast is fairly abrupt.
That is why these lines are not designed for false casting. If you start making false casts, the timing of the back casts and forward casts become very difficult to control and you’ll probably end up making an inefficient cast. Besides, even when using floating lines, more than two false casts can be a waste of valuable fishing time.
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