** NOTE ** Video Appears Below.
The tuck cast is at the heart of a good tight line nymphing presentation. It’s the result of good turnover in the air. It’s a simple fly-first entry. The tucks cast is not a specialized cast; it’s a one-hundred percent cast. Every time, all the time, this is how we cast a Mono Rig. No lobbing. Real casting, with control and accuracy that sets up a great drift.
These nine essential skills are the baseline for dead drifting nymphs with a tight line. These are the necessary fundamentals. We fish many different tactics and fly styles on a Mono Rig, tight line system, but it all starts here. These skills set the foundation for everything else that is possible.
This nine-part video series is a companion resource to the Troutbitten article series and the podcast series.
READ: Troutbitten | Series | The Nine Essential Skills for Tight Line Nymphing
PODCAST | Troutbitten | The Nine Essential Skills for Tight Line Nymphing #1
Here’s the video . . .
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Fish hard, friends.
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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
After seeing your video, I finally feel I understand the tuck cast. Looking forward to the other chapters in your series.
Glad to hear that.
Hey Dom, here’s my issue: casting a heavy streamer. This came up after listening to your recent streamer podcasts. I tied some craft fur steamers with 1/8″, 1/16″, and 1/32″ jig hooks (and got introduced to powder paint in watermelon, but that’s besides the point). Tuck casting 2.0g and 3.0g streamers seems impossible. Most of my casts were flying under the line and looked pretty bad. lobbying the streamers looked better, but not consistent. I tried some Lefty kreh type casts, extending my arm way back and casting more upright, which worked on occassion, but also is not consistent and hurts my shoulder (however, in past years, a Lefy style cast was working for me for as straight cast but no tuck). Also, I want to be able to throw line, which I can do somewhat, but lacks consistency until I can get the basic cast right. So what should I be thinking about when casting these bad boy flies? My rig is a standard mono, 10 ft 4 wt rod with 5 feet of 2x tippet (Hmm, now I just looked at the 5 feet of tippet as a potential problem). Thanks and cheers!
Hi Toney.
Good question. Honestly, it’ll feel pretty odd until you get used to it. Sounds like you have a little too much speed in the cast. I don’t say that very much, do I? But yeah, with a lot of weight, you can take out some speed and soften up that crisp stop. That’s all. I would NOT lob it out there. Meaning, you still want turnover and a fly first entry. But just like using very light weight, there’s a casting adjustment for fishing very heavy flies. Try that out.
It’s not the tippet. And it’s not the leader. It’s just your casting approach. Also, I would not change the arm slot. Don’t reach. Keep the elbow in. Just change the speed and soften up the stop.
Make sense?
Dom
OK. That all worked. And I took another look at your streamer casting videos. Softenting things up did the trick. I can now cast my 2.5g streamer out to 30-40 feet consistently–without my arm hurting. I was able to practice all the moves in your streamer presentation blogs. Toward the end of the day, I tied a purple spider to the streamer hook. I didn’t catch a big fish, but I caught a big rock and did something I’ve never done. I lost my entire rig including sighter. That hurt. There must have been a wind knot on the sighter. Or maybe the sighter just got old after two seasons. Cheers, Toney