When I first started fly fishing, one of my instructors said this about mending: “Just pick up your fly line and place it upstream of your dry fly or indicator, and that’s all there is to it!” Now, in my ninth year of guiding, I know that’s not all there is to it. I have seen all kinds of crazy things when it comes to mending. Some fly fishers always mend in one direction, no matter what, and often defeat the purpose of mending — why they are doing it in the first place. Additionally, I’ve learned that there is a lot more to mending than just picking up your line and tossing it someplace else. Here is what I have learned about this fly-fishing skill and how to improve your mending technique to catch more fish.
The What and Why of Mending
Simply put, we mend to get a drag-free or natural drift of the fly when casting across a stream. Trout know when something that might be food is behaving unnaturally, so we seek to present the fly in a natural manner. Mending is moving your fly line in order to achieve a natural drift. When you cast your fly across a river, the line often comes down across parts of the stream that flow at different speeds. These different flows will pull at your line, affecting its drift. If you don’t mend, the varied current speeds will eventually cause your fly to move at a different speed than the current it is riding on or in. When this happens, the fly behaves differently than a real food item does, leading to a refusal. We mend in order to fix this problem.
After casting across the river, the first step of the basic mend is to land the cast with some slack in the line so drag doesn’t start immediately. Slack gives you line on the water that you then can lift up and flip above or below the fly.
Lifting and flipping the line above or below the fly is about as detailed a description of the move as you’ll find in most books and articles and in most videos. In reality, it’s something you actually have to perform in order to get the hang of it. I tell my clients to do it with a stiff-arm toss of the rod. That seems to help. The extended arm extends the rod’s reach and helps pick up line off the water and put it back down without moving the fly. Even then, though, the process of moving your line risks disturbing the fly, so it’s usually a good idea to make your mend far above where you think the fish are feeding.
Often, the current between you and the fly will be moving faster than the current where the fly is riding. That’s when you make an upstream mend. When done properly, on an upstream mend, the fly line will resemble the letter C, with the back of the C facing the upstream current. This maneuver puts the midsection of the line above the fly with sufficient slack in the line riding the faster current that the fly will drift naturally downstream to a waiting trout. Conversely, when the current between you and the fly is moving slower than the current that the fly is in, you mend downstream. Also, there are times you want to use the faster current near you to swing a wet fly or nymph up off the bottom or when you want to use the current to skitter a caddis on the surface, and then you need to make a downstream mend, too.
Over more than thirty years of fly fishing, I have used several variations on mending that go beyond the basic mend. These extend the drift of your fly, increasing your chances of catching more fish, or solve a variety of problems you’ll encounter on the water.
Extending the Drift
In 1993, when taking a workshop through the Fly Shop in Redding, I saw my mentor, Chip O’Brien, fish a nymph under an indicator approximately two hundred feet downstream of us on the lower Sacramento River. I was in awe that he could drift the indicator so far and both see the take and set the hook, then land a beautiful 18-inch lower Sac wild rainbow. I have since come up with ways to teach this technique to my clients. I call it the “Zorro then bump mend.”
Zorro is a fictional character created in 1919 by American writer Johnston McCulley and the hero of many movies and TV series. He is a master swordsman who regularly leaves his mark — a large Z carved by his sword — on walls or even people. I use the Z-for-Zorro reference to teach how to begin to extend a drift downstream.
When you cast upstream and across the river, your line will drift back toward you with slack. You use your line hand to remove the slack in order to be able to set the hook on a fish. Now, instead of picking up and casting again, keep fishing downstream, extending your drift. Just before the fly or indicator is even with you across the stream, make an upstream mend that places the line above the fly. Then, when the fly or indicator is even with you, execute a large Z by shaking your rod from one side to the other while feeding some slack back out. The Goldilocks principle applies when making the Z mend. Too little slack will cause your fly to move. Too much slack, and you won’t be able to set the hook.
Doing this zip-zip-zip Z shake will allow you then to go on and execute a bump mend without affecting the fly, which is now dead-drifting downstream from you. A bump mend just feeds more line into the downstream presentation and is accomplished by pointing your rod slightly down toward the river and gently pulsing the rod up and down so the slack feeds out in gentle sine waves. Feed the line so that it and the fly travel at the speed of the current. Remember: if you do it too slowly, the fly will drag, and if you feed line too quickly, you’ll create slack that will slow your hookset.
You can continue the bump mend as often as you want to keep extending the drift downstream, as long as you can still see a fish take your dry fly or see your indicator twitch.
Other Mends
The pull-back mend is variation on the bump mend in a downstream presentation. Make a downstream cast ten feet or so upstream and off to the side of a feeding fish. Now pull your fly into the feeding lane above the fish. That’s the pull-back mend. Leave yourself enough slack so that you can execute the bump mend described above to deliver the fly to the fish. This same method can be used to fish nymphs under an indicator to fishy spots below you. It works very well, because the first thing the trout sees is the fly, and not the line or indicator.
The stack mend is used primarily when fishing with a strike indicator, split shot, and one or more nymphs. During a drift, it moves your indicator upstream, and since the surface of the river is moving faster than the water at the bottom, the mend keeps the indicator above the flies, which prevents it from pulling the flies up out of the strike zone and stops them from moving unnaturally fast. After making a cast with your indicator rig, with some slack off the reel, lift the rod straight up to about one o’clock behind your shoulder, as if you are performing a roll cast in a direction just above your indicator. Then throw slack line just upstream of the indicator. When a stack mend is done correctly, your indicator will pop out of the water and land upstream. This can be repeated multiple times, if necessary.
Aerial Mends
As you increase your mending skills, you will want to learn how to mend your line in the air, before it lands on the water. By doing this, you avoid spooking fish by disturbing the line after it’s on the water. The following aerial mending techniques will help you improve your presentations, especially with dry-fly tactics.
The reach cast with skate and drop is another way to move your fly into the lane where a fish is feeding, kind of like the pull-back mend. In May 2014, I went to guide school at Clearwater Lodge in northeastern California. We spent a glorious week learning all sorts of fly-fishing techniques and also how to be good teachers and guides for our clients. One evening on Hat Creek, we fished size 18 and 20 Pale Evening Dun patterns just before dark to rising fish approximately fifty to sixty feet from us. It was practically impossible to see your fly after it landed. One of the instructors asked me if I knew the reach and skate-and-drop technique — making an aerial mend just as you would a mend on the water (the reach cast), landing the fly about ten feet above a feeding fish, then skating it into the feeding lane. The presentation worked wonderfully. I landed a beautiful 14-inch wild rainbow.
To make a reach cast, as your cast unrolls in front of you, reach high and upstream, making a mend in the air and placing the line above the fly when it lands. Then gently lift the rod up and back so that the fly skates on the surface. The wake made by the fly makes it visible in low-light conditions, even a small dry fly. This allows you to place it accurately into a feeding lane. This technique is a staple for me when dry-fly fishing. The wiggle cast is essential to achieve a drag-free drift when fishing dry flies to rising fish where there are varied current speeds and when casting a fly a long distance into prime water. This is one of the simplest aerial mends. After delivering the fly forward in the overhead cast, simply wiggle your rod left and right before the fly lands, putting multiple horizontal S waves in your line. The currents will absorb the added slack while your fly dead-drifts naturally to feeding trout.
The parachute cast works well when fishing to picky trout, when casting to fish rising downstream, and when casting across a lot of different currents. The parachute cast gets its name because the fly line and fly gently fall onto the water. When I teach the overhead cast, one of the tips I give clients is to watch their back cast. Usually, we want the plane of the cast to extend uphill back over our shoulder and then downhill on the forward cast so that the fly and fly line straighten out just above the surface of the water. With the parachute cast, the opposite is true. We want to shift the plane to go downhill behind us and uphill in front. By doing so, the fly and a pile of slack leader and line will land softly. After this happens, slowly lower your rod tip to keep the fly drifting at the same speed as the current so the fly approaches the feeding trout in a natural manner.
Just Do It
No words in a magazine can convey what you really need in order to understand and execute line mends while fishing. You can find videos online that will help you visualize and understand mending, but it is best if you practice doing it with a fly rod in your hand, preferably on a stream (while you can practice some mends on grass in a park, there’s nothing like the real thing). You need to mend line to fish flies well, so just do it — work on your mending while you fish. Start with one kind of mend, get good at it, and then work on another. You’ll soon notice that you’re catching more fish.
