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Bill Luscombe has been hunting and fishing
for most of his 42 years. He has been flyfishing for
20 years. He instructs flyfishing, and has done so for
the past 12 years. He also instructs the federal FSET
firearms course and the BC CORE hunter training course.
He is an award-winning outdoor writer and has been writing
freelance since 1987. He has been published in BC Sport
Fishing Magazine, Outdoor Edge, BC Outdoors, Western
Sportsman, Island Fish Finder, and the BC Hunting Guide.
Bill Luscombe was born an army brat and raised in Ladner
(Delta, BC) where he was raised hunting waterfowl and
pheasants. He presently resides in North Cowichan on
southern Vancouver Island where he has lived and worked
full time as a professional forester since 1982. |
He presently works in Nanaimo for the BC Forest Service and
continue to write the fly-fishing column for BC Sport Fishing
Magazine as well as contributing articles freelance to various
outdoor magazines in western Canada. Bill Luscombe is also
a BC Director of the Northwest Outdoor Writers Association.
"Catching fish is not hard. You simply need to understand
what makes them tick. If you think like a fish, you will catch
fish. It’s as simple as that."- Bill Luscombe
I just finished teaching another fly-fishing course to 19 enthusiastic
novices and I always enjoy fielding the vast array of questions
that they ask. More than that, however, I like helping them
learn to cast. I find it quite amazing that, with just 2.5 hours
of theory and three hours of practical training, nearly the
entire class can cast well enough to go fishing.
There is usually one or two however, who just can't get it
right. Sometimes it is due to a physical impairment, but most
of the time it is a lack of timing. I try to spend extra time
with them, and eventually they reach a level where they too
can cast well enough to fish, but their timing is still forced
and it usually takes many more hours of practice before they
can truly say they are comfortable casting.
Casting a fly isn't difficult; it is 10% strength and 90%
timing. The first step towards learning to cast well is to
get your hands on a good rod. Ultimately, your reel is little
more than a glorified line holder (for the trout fishermen
anyway) and your line is simply a means to an end (the end
being a way to deliver the fly to the fish), but your rod
is a wand of wonder. If you can only afford one piece of expensive
equipment, this is where the money should go. Buy a good serviceable
rod that is built well and casts well, and it will perform
year after year (many good rods come with lifetime guarantees),
but buy a cheaply made rod and you'll regret it almost immediately.
Cheap rods can be recognised right off the bat. The fastest
way for a manufacturer to save money on his rods is to skimp
on the number of guides. A good rod should have a guide for
every foot of rod length, not including the stripping guide
(the big one closest to the handle). That means that a nine-foot
rod should have nine guides plus a stripping guide. The guides
keep the line close to the rod blank as the line slides through.
If there aren't enough guides, then the gaps between the guides
become too wide. This allows the line to move about too much
and it will slap against the blank when you shoot the line
out. This results in poorer, shorter casts.
Tip spiral and damping speed are two more things that affect
your casting. Damping speed is the speed at which the rod
tip stops moving when you stop moving the rod. The faster
the damping speed the better the rod will cast.
Tip spiral is to be avoided. When you stop moving the rod,
the tip should continue to move in the same plane as you were
moving it until it stops. Rods sometimes have the guides mounted
in the wrong place in relation to the spine and this causes
the rod tip to change direction when you stop casting and
try to shoot the line. Worse yet, some tips will change from
an arc to a complete spiral as they dampen. This causes the
rod to cast ringlets in the line as it shoots through the
tip. This causes excess friction and shortens your distance.
The tip should stop quickly and not change direction once
you stop casting.
Lastly, when you're casting remember that the rod was designed
to cast the line. You must "load" the rod by forcing
a bend into it when you cast. Many of my students under-power
their casts and use the rod like a lever because they are
afraid it might break. This inevitably results in collapsing
loops and piles of line at their feet. Remember, the rod was
designed to cast the line. Let the rod produce the power,
you must simply apply pressure at the right time to cast well
Previous Articles by Bill Luscombe:
To visit saltwater flyfishing patterns by Bill Luscombe,
visit:
For more information about Bill Luscombe and his available
courses visit his home page at:
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