Casting a Sink Tip Fly Line
Swinging a Sink Tip Fly Line
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This technique, often called the Wet Fly Steelhead Swing, is required to control a sink tip line in moving water. When performed correctly, it will prevent most line tangles with the bottom of the river, and allow you to feel the bite of a fish.
To start, step out into the head of the run in fairly shallow water and strip out enough line so the sink tip plus about four feet of floating line are outside your end guide, then shake or cast it out into the water. Start with all or your line directly downstream of you. Lift up your rod and perform one back cast. On the forward cast, you should lay the line out on the water about 45 degrees down and across. (0 degrees is downstream, anything between 0 and 90 degrees is down and across, 90 degress is directly across the current, and 180 degrees is directly upstream. All your casts with a sink tip will be down and across somewhere between 0 and 90 degrees.)
When I walk into a run, I usually start at the head of the run and cast down and across at 45 degrees with a short line. (Doing this gives you the opportunity to catch the fish holding in the shallow water at the head of the run.) I do not mend this cast and leave the rod tip where is stopped, about 2 to 4 feet above the water. I follow the line with the tip of the rod as it swings across the curent and lower the rod tip as it is swinging. When the line is directly downstream, the rod tip is in the water. If the fly hangs up, I step out into slightly deeper water.
If the fly does not hang up, I will stay in the same spot, and make another cast down and across at 45 degrees and immediately do another back cast. This time I will lay the line out on the water about 75 to 80 degrees down and across. At the end of two or three casts, the line should be almost perpendicular to the flow of the river. Once again, I leave the rod tip where is stopped, 2 to 4 feet above the water, and follow and lower the rod as the fly and line swing through the current. If the fly hangs up this time, I will strip out a couple feet of line and angle the cast slightly more downstream at about 75 degrees down and across. I will continue to stip out line at the end of every swing until I have an amount of line on the water that I am comfortable casting or enough line to get to the current seam. At this point I will step downstream (In the direction of the current seam.) at the end of every swing.
If the fly still does not hang up, I will mend the line upstream immediately after the last cast. (To do a mend, draw a circle in the air with the tip of the rod. The tip starts at the bottom of the circle and rotates upstream. If you need a big mend, make sure you have line in your hand at the end of the cast, then drop it right before the mend. The mend will pick up the slack line between your reel and first guide and lay it out on the water. Laying out slack line keeps the fly from moving towards you during the mend, and allows it to sink deeper.) After the mend, the rod should be perpendicular to the river and pointing up in the air about 45 degrees. (Actually, the angle of the rod to the river will be determined by how fast the fly should sink to reach the bottom. If you are in the right water and the fly is not getting down, do a larger mend with more line. If the fly is sinking too fast, do a smaller mend with less line so the rod ends less than 90 degrees to the flow of the river.)
After you have completed the mend, you are finally fishing! At this point, your rod is almost perpendicular to the flow of the river and pointing up into the air about 45 degrees. When the line starts to straighten out and you just start to feel the weight of the line, you should begin to follow the line and fly with the tip of the rod. As the fly and line are drifting downstream, your rod tip is slowly rotating downstream and getting closer to the surface of the water. This is called line control. You are actually controlling the location of the fly in the water column. As you rotate the rod tip downstream you are allowing the fly to sink. If you rotate fast and put slack in the line, the fly and line sinks faster. If you rotate slow and put tension on the line, the fly and line sinks slower.
When the rod tip is pointed directly downstream and directly at the line and fly and almost touching the water, you have completed the swing. If you start another cast right now, you will be taking the fly away from about 20% of the fish you would otherwise catch. When the fly is at the end of the drift, just leave it there for five seconds, then wiggle the end of the rod, and finally give the line a couple of short erratic strips. Often a steelhead will see the fly in the middle of the swing and follow it until it stops. Sometimes they will even nip at it, but they usually won’t take it. However, when it starts to move away from them on the retrieve, they will attack it like a cat. Once you have stripped in enough line (You only need to strip in enough line so that you can lift the rest off it off of the water on your first back cast.), take two big steps downstream and start to recast. First cast 45 degrees upstream, second cast 70 to 80 degrees upstream. Repeat this until you have finished the run.
If you want to consistently catch fish with a sink tip fly line, you will have to master the art of line control. If you understand what you need to do to control your fly line, you can master this technique in a day. The most important thing to do is pay attention to what your line and fly is doing on every cast. Yes....every cast! This means that you can not do the same thing over and over just because you are used to doing it, or because it is the way you were taught. The way I like to teach sink tip technique is by telling my clients that there is a progression that you go through when you fish a run to make sure your fly is getting down. When you start fishing any run, your first cast should be down and across at 45 degrees. If the fly hangs up at the end of the swing, then make the next cast down and across at 30 degrees with a tight line and no mend. If it still hangs up then you are either fishing water that is too slow, or using a tip that is too heavy for the run. If the fly does not hang up at the end of the swing (this us usually the case), then your next cast should be directly across the current at 90 degrees. If the fly still does not hang up, then the next cast is directly across the current at 90 degrees, make sure you have some slack line in your hand at the end of the cast, drop the slack line, and make a mend. If the fly still does not hang up, then the next cast is directly across the current at 90 degrees, make sure you have some slack line in your hand at the end of the cast, drop the slack line, make a mend, then immediately take three big steps downstream. If the fly still does not hang up at the end of the swing, then you are either fishing in water that is too fast, or using a sink tip that is not heavy enough for the run. With each of the steps mentioned above, you are giving you fly and line more time to sink. Now this is where you have to pay attention. You do not want your fly to hang up on every cast. You also do not want the fly to never hang up. When you are learning the feel of a sink tip, you want the fly to hang up after a half dozen casts. Once you learn the "feel", you want the fly to hang up when you give it a couple extra seconds to sink. If the fly doesn't hang up when you think it should, then follow the steps above to give it more time to sink. Now as you work the run from top to bottom, you will have to continually adjust your technique. You need to do this because the flow changes from head to throat to tail out. If you master this technique, you will put your fly in front of more fish, you will catch more fish, and your confidence will grow. Just remember.....pay attention on every cast, or should I say swing, and make adjustments to your technique often.
