Alarka Casting "Competition"

It’s Spring again, and time for our camping trip in Bryson City, NC. We’ll be running our casting “competition” again on Saturday evening. “Competition” is in quotes, because this is a friendly game, with the major prize being Bragging Rights and maybe a small box of flies or something.

The real win is the practice you need leading up to event. If you spend a little time in the backyard or park a few nights a week, you will quickly develop accuracy at these distances. This is also a great tune-up for Spring fishing, and will enhance your ability on the stream. The game is an accuracy challenge at modest distance.
 
Some tips on at home practice:

1. Make your setup the same every time. Use a measuring tape to layout the targets.
2. Always practice with the same rod setup.
3. Use a highly visible fly or orange yarn in place of the fly.
4. Remember, your trajectory should change from 20 to 35 feet.
5. Master the shorter targets before moving to longer targets.
6. A few short practice sessions are better than long marathon sessions. For example, it is better have three thirty minute sessions, than one two-hour session.
7. Focus on success. Stop when you make a bad cast, and think about what went wrong. Correct it on the next cast.
8. Don’t forget to account for the wind.

The most frequent casting errors in our last get together were:

1. Stopping the fly too high above the target, allowing the fly to drift away from the target
2. Tracking errors  which caused the fly to flick to the left or right at the end of the cast
3. Wide inefficient loops
4. Distance accuracy, which comes with practice

To play the game at home, I lifted the basic setup for this “Casting Game” here.

​Our rules will be a little different at the camp out:

• We’ll be casting to targets at 20, 30, and 35 feet with 1, 2, and 3 points rewarded for each target, respectively.
• Cast to any combination of targets
• A Cone will be placed at the casting line and at each target. We'll use hula hoops to mark the target area, see image above.
• 40 feet of line out stripped out, with 2 feet of line outside rod tip to start
• First caster to 12 points wins, and sudden death will be targets 1, 2, 3 in order, repeating until we have a winner.
• Use any rod and line combination of your choice.
• Leaders must be 8’ in length, minimum.

 
So get out there and do a little practicing. Get a good routine, have a consistent setup, and you will be surprised at the results. Good luck and see you in Bryson City!