Fly casting is one of the great joys and great frustrations of fly fishing. If you can make decent casts, you have a better chance of catching fish. The logic is pretty simple. However, it’s a mistake to assume better casting is all about mechanics. While that plays an important role, the ability to adapt your approach and equipment to the prevailing conditions can be every bit as critical.
This is especially true in the surf. Whatever a creek, river, lake, or tropical flat can throw at you, the surf can up the ante. Imagine standing in a large river with flows that keep shifting in multiple directions, an unstable sandy bottom, and waves that slam into you every few seconds. That’s the surf. You might assume good surfcasting is about doing everything right. Actually, it’s about doing fewer things wrong. Let’s start with the easy stuff.
Line Color
Most of the time, you’ll want to fish the surf in the morning hours before the sun chases the fish offshore. If you are lucky, fog will extend your fishing time by several hours. The problem with these monotone mornings is that it can be difficult to see clear or light-colored lines while casting, because they blend into the background. A dark or brightly colored line makes things a lot easier. Fortunately, most line makers produce lines where the first 30 or so feet of line is dark and the running line is a bright color.
Straighten Out
No doubt you have pulled f ly line off a reel and seen how it forms a loose spiral. Perhaps you have also noticed how spiraled lines don’t tend to cast as far and can be less accurate. A few years back, I set a GoPro camera to a high frame rate to see exactly what was going on. The resulting slow-motion videos showed how the line zigzagged into the butt guide, often making sharp 90-degree turns. A second set of videos, with a line that had been fully stretched, showed a much smoother, undulating motion as it entered the guide.
Some lines straighten out quite easily, while others can be incredibly stubborn. One reason a line will refuse to straighten is because the coating has lost most of the plasticizers that keep it supple. Lines can last for many years if stored in a cool, dark place, but as little as a year in the heat and UV of direct sunlight can render them unusable. You may be able to restore some flexibility with line dressing, but you are probably better off getting a new line.
Folks considering surf fly fishing might (logically) assume that a saltwater line would be the best choice. However, many saltwater lines are designed to work in the tropics and have coatings and cores engineered to handle the deck of a flats boat, where the temperature often exceeds 100 degrees. In contrast, mornings in the California surf are unlikely to get the line any warmer than the mid60s. You’ll likely find that no amount of Herculean stretches will straighten these lines. The good news is that the best lines for the California surf are often the same ones we use at our freshwater venues. (If you are in doubt about your line, contact the manufacturer.)
If you have a line that meets the above criteria, but still refuses to straighten out, it may have a defective core. Bruce Richards, the former line guru at Scientific Anglers, told me that a “tight end” is one reason why some lines never go straight. The cores of many fly lines are based on braided multifilament, which is produced by machines that take 16
separate yarns and braid them together. If one yarn is slightly tighter than the rest, the resulting braid will have a twist and produce a fly line that will never straighten. Fortunately, the quality-control programs at the well-known companies make it highly unlikely such a line would ever leave the factory.
Basket Weaving
Back in the nineties and early noughties, it wasn’t uncommon to see folks fishing the surf without a stripping basket. They would strip their line into the water in a way that avoided it getting wrapped around their legs. Being unencumbered by a basket makes moving from spot to spot somewhat easier, and you certainly look less dorky. But it comes with a penalty. You can’t cast as far as you can with a basket, because a lot of the forward cast’s energy is spent pulling the line out of the water.
Overall, baskets are the way to go, but they are not without their headaches. Perhaps the biggest problem is line tangling and jamming in your rod’s guides. This is irritating when you are casting and potentially disastrous when you have a fish hitting the afterburners for Hawaii. I figured some high-frame-rate video might show what was going on. It took almost an hour of frame-by-frame analysis to see what was happening, but the results were worth it.
Line stripped into a basket forms sequential layers, though this may not be readily apparent to the angler. As long as these layers stay in place, the line will make a smooth exit from the basket. Tangles happen when the layers get out of sequence, causing the cast to lift two or more layers from the basket at the same time. Sometimes the tangle slithers through the guides and the cast goes out, but it can just as easily tighten into a spaghetti monster that snags in the butt guide and causes the cast to slam to a halt.
There are a couple of things that can mess up these layers. The most common cause is a wave hitting the basket and flipping it upward. The obvious solution to this problem is to stay out of the water, but most of the time, that’s not an option, because you’ll need to add 20 to 40 feet to your cast to reach the fish. This is why you’ll want to gauge the size of incoming waves when they are several seconds from reaching you and move forward or backward accordingly. Doing so is also a darn good idea from a safety perspective, since sneaker waves aren’t uncommon.
Another cause of tangles is a choppy retrieve, in which the line is stripped into the basket in a disorganized pile. This is where the GoPro video proved most instructive. It turns out these piles of line frequently have standing loops. If one of these loops flops over, it will trap the line below, messing up the layering sequence and thereby creating a tangle.
The best way to avoid flopping loops is to lay the line into the basket in large ovals. Right-hand casters should move their line (left) hand in a counterclockwise rotation and southpaws should do the reverse. If you hold the rod handle close to your casting shoulder during the retrieve, you’ll be able to make longer strips, which aid in getting larger, more stable ovals in the basket. Needless to say, a well-stretched and supple line makes this a lot easier.
Angle of Attack
Where you position yourself relative to the water can be important. One of the most productive features in the surf is a rip where water is channeled off the beach. Rips are deeper than the adjacent areas, which means that waves won’t break until they are closer to shore. While you might want to stand close to the center of the rip so you can get the fly into the most productive water, those breaking waves will make that more challenging and quite possibly dangerous. In these circumstances the best place to stand is to the side of the rip, where the waves have broken farther offshore and have already dissipated a lot of energy. You’ll need to cast your line at an angle to reach the best water, but it’s a safer and way more comfortable way to fish.
Sand Berms
On many beaches, the sand can present a steep slope between the mid-tide and high-tide levels. If you fish during these tide stages, that slope will be where your back cast wants to go. If you don’t adjust the angle of your back cast, it may hit the sand. I’ve lost count of how many times I have seen folks obliviously slamming their f lies into the sand behind them. Needless to say, this can quickly turn your hook point into a blunt nub.
To avoid this problem, you’ll want to watch your back cast and adjust the trajectory. This is where a Belgian (constant tension) cast can help, because you can direct the line upward on the back cast. The only downside to this cast is that it can put twists in the line. The easiest way to spot these twists is to pay attention to the line between the basket and your reel. If it spirals, you have twist. You may also notice that the line starts tangling on almost every cast. To remove this twist, right-handers should rotate the rod along its axis in a counterclockwise rotation, while lefties should go clockwise. A half dozen rotations is usually enough.
The Mosh Pit
Casting experts will tell you that the key to a great cast is having the rod tip follow a straight path. They will also tell you that to make a longer cast, you need a longer stroke. Combine these two elements, and you have the basic ingredients for a really long cast. Unfortunately, many folks overdo the stroke length, which creates problems. You may be able to get away with an overly long stroke in more tranquil waters, but the surf is anything but tranquil. Stand knee deep in the swash zone, and you will be subject to powerful wave surge, turbulent, fast-moving backwash, and sand sluicing from beneath your feet. It’s like casting in a liquid mosh pit. The longer your casting stroke, the greater the chance these chaotic forces will affect your cast.
The solution is to make your cast more compact. While some folks reach too far back on the back cast, the most common mistake is excessive forward extension, with the rod stopped with the elbow almost straightened out. Overhead casters should try to stop the rod just after the reel comes into their peripheral vision which is a few inches to a foot in front of the ear. Sidearm casters should aim to stop when the reel is just in front of the torso. This will no doubt feel wrong at first, and you may worry about the fly hitting you in the head or back. Start by making short, low-powered casts and make sure to watch the line unfurl on the back cast. Do this a few times, and you’ll get things dialed in.
Flipping, Snapping, and Squeezing
The final tip is probably the hardest to master, but it can make a huge difference in your surfcasting. It’s all about creating a tight, narrow loop with very little effort. The technique is certainly not new, Jim Green described it nicely in a 1975 video Secrets of Fly Casting, where he referred to the quick movement of the thumb as flipping the tip. Joan Wulff also covered this move, but refers to it as the power snap. She uses a screen door handle glued to a fly rod to demonstrate it in a video titled Joan Wulff Teaches the Basics of Fly Casting. More recently, George Revel describes it as squeezing the grip and shows the technique in a video called Fly Casting Tips and Techniques: Distance Fly Casting. All of these videos can be found on YouTube. (Use the QR codes below to view the Wulff and Revel videos.)
While these experts have slight differences in how they execute the move, the end result is much the same. The rod tip moves through a very short arc before making an abrupt stop. The line comes off the rod tip with a narrow loop that flies much farther. I assume the reason this technique works so well is that the small muscles in the hand provide a level of fine motor control that is not possible with the larger muscles in the arm and shoulder.
Some folks claim this technique adds a lot of line speed, though I’m not sure that’s correct. A more likely reason why it increases casting distance probably has to do with wind resistance. Narrower loops have less wind resistance, which means the line will fly farther for the same amount of effort.
The value of this technique is that it allows you to shorten your casting stroke, which, as we discussed above, means waves, currents and shifting sands will have less effect on the cast. Regardless of which expert’s version you use, the key to executing this move is to force yourself not to force it. If you power through this move, you will almost certainly fatten the loop and reduce how far your cast travels. This is very much a finesse move. If you are interested in exploring this topic more fully, Bruce Richards did a great article in the Fall 2022 issue of The Loop Journal, which can be found on the Fly Fishers International website (QR code below).
I hope these tips will help make your surf-fishing experience more productive and enjoyable. There’s really no reason to treat fishing the surf like a mixed martial arts fight.
