Fly Fishing: The Truth About False Casts

Fly fishers seem confused about the false cast. A false cast is a forward cast on which you follow with a back cast rather than letting the line and fly fall on the water.

We should make false casts, but only out of necessity. But some fly fishers make too many, out of habit. There is a time for it, and a time when it is, well, a waste of time. And a waste of precious energy. I’ve seen fly fishers false cast so much that their casting deteriorated as the day wore on.

In the trout stream world, the falsecast is a “drying cast.” Two or three strokes shakes water from a dry fly, and it floats again.

The old adage goes, a fly in the air can’t catch a fish. Right? When combing a straight shoreline by boat where your cast distances don’t change much, get in the habit of picking your fly off the water, make one backcast and deliver the fly on the forward stroke. Pick it up, lay it down. That eliminates the false cast. Get into that rhythm and your fly will spend maximum time in the water. An exception is fishing the aforementioned hairbug, which needs to be dried occasionally, particularly if you don’t dress it with a floatant.

Excessive false casting, especially if you put your body into it, can literally rock the boat. Keep that in mind when stalking those spooky bonefish, permit and redfish.

Consider that with excessive false casting, you run the risk of forming so-called “wind knots” in your leader, particularly if you are not an experienced caster. As you tire after all of that false casting you tend to push the rod harder, and that can cause a tailing loop that results in the knot.

But there are good reasons for false casting, too. You can shoot line through your line hand after that extra cast to lengthen your line should you need to land your fly farther out than on your initial cast. Conversely, you can shorten your line while in the air, too, by stripping some of it in as you make the false cast, though this takes a bit of practice.

You can also make one false cast to change the direction of your fly line for your next cast. Let’s say that you cast at a fish at 12 o’clock off the bow of your boat. It spooks or refuses to bite. You immediately spot another fish, this time at 3 o’clock of the boat. Pick up your line and fly, and if you can’t load the rod well enough to go right to 3 o’clock on the forward cast, make at most one false cast to get your rodtip pointing in the right direction to present the fly. You don’t even have to shift your feet or turn your body.

And should you present a fly to a sighted fish and lose sight of it, you can always make a falsecast, or even two, to give yourself time to see it again. But, make that falsecast off to the side a ways rather than over the spot where you saw the fish. That risks spooking the fish with the line overhead.

I have fished quite a few deerhair bugs, such as the Dahlberg Diver, in my day for both largemouth bass and snook. I found that a couple of forceful, aggressive false casts shed water and thus lightened their weight so that they would float better and pop on top, similar to what stream anglers do with dry flies.

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• This article was featured in the July 2024 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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