Casting Practice

Apparently I came down with a case of Muskie fever.  I had a day to fish and this time of year offers an adventuring angler numerous quality options, maybe too many.  Several of these options held my attention, but the ghosts of those huge tigers pulled me away from the salt, fall trout, or salmon etc.  The only problem was that no one told the tigers to show up.  I fished hard for 10 of the 11 hours I was on the water.  I  worked the structure,  fished cover, fished near bait all for chance to entice a tiger to eat my fly.

The disheartening part of the day was that I never saw any signs of them. The prior week there were boils, a couple of fish jumping and even a two swimming on the surface with their heads out of the water.  None of this was evident on this day.

I did manage to take some shots of me casting.  Casting large 7-8" flies even with an 9 or 11 wt all day means one really needs to be spot on with one's gear and technique.  In terms of gear one needs to have properly lined rods in order to throw half chickens out there with any kind of distance.  Technique wise you better know how to double haul and not be sloppy in your casting or else one will quickly burn out and not be able to put in the time that maybe necessary to land a fish.

                                           

                                          The deep bend of a good forward stroke. 

                                                                      Letting it fly.

                               One of the flies I was slinging all day.