A helpful video about tying knots here

The purpose of modern fly fishing is to enter into the mysterious, watery world of aquatic creatures to fool a fish. Mastering this art is both a challenge and, more importantly, a recreation.

To fool a fish the fly caster presents an imitation of something the fish likes to eat in such a way that the fish will eat it. Some stealth is required, as fish are wary of predators, including humans. That means casting the imitation, the fly, from a sufficient distance that the fish will notice the fly and not the fly caster.

What fish like to eat

Trout and bass, two common freshwater species that anglers like to stalk and catch, are carnivores that eat insects, crustaceans, smaller fish and sometimes a small mammal swimming in the water.

Many anglers enjoy fishing for fish that are feeding on the surface, consuming insects that are hatching from their larval stages or that have fallen into the water from nearby trees, bushes, and banks. It’s a thrill to see a fish rise to eat an insect, and even more of a thrill when it rises to your fly. Stalking rising fish is known as “sight fishing.”  Sight fishing for fish feeding under the surface is possible in clear, slow water, but requires special skills and the opportunities are much less common than sight fishing for rising fish.

Casting an imitation designed to float on the water (dry fly fishing)

“Dry flies” are imitations of insects floating on the water’s surface. Naturally, they have very little weight of their own and must be carried over the water at the end of the fly line, whose weight gets its momentum from the motion and energy you impart to your fly rod. The technique of fly casting presents the fly accurately and gently to the fish without arousing its suspicion. Your fly rod is 9 feet long and the fly line and rod are matched for efficient casting of a “5 or 6 weight” line.

Gripping a fly rod

This may seem trivial, but it isn’t. There are three basic ways to hold a fly rod.

1) the pointer, with the index finger on top of the grip pointing in the direction you want to cast.

2) the v-grip, with the notch twix thumb and index finger on top of the rod pointing back at you.

3) the power grip, with the thumb on top of the grip.

Every angler has an individual preference but there are some general rules. The “pointer” is sometimes preferred on small streams where short highly accurate casts are required using light tackle. The “v-grip” is halfway between the pointer and the power grip. It’s a rather natural grip, like “shaking hands” with the rod, but for many anglers it gives less accurate presentations than the other two. The “power grip” is sometimes preferred on big water, like the upper Delaware River, where distance is important. Building good casting habits starts with the grip.

The mechanics of fly casting

The fly rod is a lever that takes the energy from the angler’s arm and transfers it smoothly to the fly line. There is a common expression that goes something like, "the fly rod should move in a short arc from about 10:00 to 2:00 and back again on a slow count of four.” It’s not very useful.

The fly line must travel in a straight line to give long and accurate casts. Therefore, the tip of the rod (the “tip top”) must travel in a straight line in its forward and backward motion that propels the fly line. The tip top of a 9 foot rod has an excursion of about 15 feet. If the tip top moves in straight line, so will the fly line and as the fly line reverses direction, from the back cast to the forward cast, it forms a “tight loop”. A tight loop is good, and an open loop (a round circuling motion) is bad.

But, to make the rod move backward and forward, the caster “swings the rod in an arc”. Seems counterintuitive, yes? The apparent contradiction is resolved by the precise engineering of the flyrod to flex progressively from mid-section to the tip top. In the illustration below, a 9 foot rod moves back and forth. The “butt” of the rod at the bottom end moves back and forth between 1 and 2+ feet (depending on the distance of the cast), and the arc of the rod is 90 degrees, from about 10:30 to about 1:30.

If the arc of the casting stroke exceeds 90 degrees, the tip top will make a dipping, or circular motion at the ends of the casting stroke, causing the fly line to follow. The result is a wide, circling, “open loop” (as opposed to the desired tight loop). An “open loop” loses momentum and the line falls, bunched up on the water, instead of turning over the leader, tippet and fly in a straight line.

The more circular motion of the flyrod (like a windshield wiper) the more open the loop and the greater the loss of distance and accuracy.

Here are some tips:

1) Start with the proper grip. I recommend the power grip for the Upper Delaware River.

2) Keep the casting stroke within a 90 degree arc (10:30 to 1:30) with hard stops at the ends.

3) The elbow is low and the shoulder down.

4) The wrist is stiff except in the last half of the casting stroke as it imparts a thrust before the hard stop.

5) The forward rod position remains at 45 degrees until the line if fully stretched out over the water, at which point it can descend to horizontal or swing up or down stream in a reach cast.

Beginning fly casters do pretty much the opposite. (No judgment here, I make the same mistakes too, after 65 years trying to master fly casting):

1) The intuitive grip is the V grip, It feels natural but it’s less efficient than either the pointer or the power grip.

2) It feels right to swing the rod beyond 90 degrees. It’s unnatural to stop it at 45 degrees from

vertical.

3) To correct an open loop the “natural” response is to lift the elbow higher to get the line off the water. This opens the loop further and wears out the rotator cuff of the poor shoulder that’s working too hard.

4) Casting with mostly wrist motion (the windshield wiper motion) feels natural. Moving the hand back and forth with elbow. and a little shoulder motion seems less efficient. Keeping your arm still and moving the fly rod with only your wrist will cause it to make that “windshield wiper” motion (and the dreaded “open loop”). Keeping your arm stiff and moving it only from the shoulder will do the same and wear out your rotator cuff in short order. Fly casting is more in the elbow than in the shoulder or wrist, though all play their parts. Like a good golf swing, a good casting stroke requires being mindful of the contribution of each of the three joints (shoulder, elbow, and wrist) as you learn the mechanics of fly casting.

5) It feels natural for the rod to continue to follow the fly line forward and, therefore, to drop the tip of the rod before the line is fully extended in the air.

Developing good casting habits means fighting these seemingly natural mistakes that rob the cast of distance and accuracy.

Line, leader and tippet

The fly is tied to a long, monofilament “leader” that is tapered down to a fine “tippet,” which is meant to be as invisible as possible. If the tippet is too thick, a “leader shy” fish won’t go near it. If the tippet is too fine, a strong fish will “break off”.

There are many ways to attach the leader to fly line, extra tippet to the leader and the fly to the tippet. Which knots you should use for these purposes is much debated, and every angler chooses their own favorite knots. Your hosts have prepared a short video, demonstrating three useful knots. The Internet has many more.

Line Control

As you master the mechanics of fly casting, you’ll learn a number of skills that come under the category of “line control”- that is, maintaining and adjusting where the line is in the air and on the water to optimize your “presentation” of the fly to a wary but foolish fish. In moving water, like the Upper Delaware River, the “reach cast” is particularly useful. By placing the line nearest to you “up river” at the end of the cast, the reach cast extends the duration of the “natural” appearance of your drifting fly. Your instructor will show you how to use it.

Nymph fishing

Fish consume more of their diet under the surface than on the surface of the river, but fish are opportunistic eaters and will consume all the nymphs, emergers, duns and spinners (the 4 stages of the life cycle of most aquatic insects) that drift by. Nymphs are the larval stages of mayflies, caddis flies and stone flies, along with some other aquatic insects. They live among the rocks, sand, mud and weeds at the bottom of a river or lake. Most nymph fishing is “fishing the water,” which means the angler “prospects” areas of the river or lake where fish are likely to hold and feed. Sight fishing with nymphs in clear, slow water can be fun and productive if you are stealthy and patient. Nymph imitations are often weighted so they will sink quickly to travel with the current near the river bottom where the fish hold in pockets or behind rocks.

Streamer fishing

Imitations of bait fish are a desirable choice when the water is high and fish hold in slower water near the banks of the river. Such imitations, called streamers, are larger and heavier than dry flies and nymphs, particularly if they are weighted to sink quickly.

Handling Fish to Conserve the Resource

To conserve fragile trout populations, modern fly anglers practice “catch and release.”

Follow these principles (rules) to minimize harm to the fish:

1) Capture the fish in net or hand as quickly as possible to avoid exhausting it. Light tackle is fun to use, but a heavier, stiffer rod accomplishes the task faster.

2) Keep the fish in the water, where it “breathes.” To understand how important this is, try holding your breath underwater after heavy exercise (like a fish taken out of the water).

3) Preserve the fish’s protective “slime layer” by a) using a net with a rubber/synthetic mesh, b) removing gloves, if you wear gloves and c) wetting your hands before touching the fish,

4) When holding a fish, ring the narrow part in front of the tail (caudal fin) with one hand and cradle the belly between the pectoral fin and the pelvic fin with the other. Avoid squeezing the ventral area behind the gills and under the pectoral fin – that’s where the heart is and squeezing it can harm the fish. Also try to avoid rubbing the lateral line or squeezing the area above it (over the air bladder). Sounds complicated, but you’ll get the hang of it. A smaller fish can simply be cradled in your palm and held gently.

5) Remove the hook while the fish is in the net, in the water, if possible. Unless the fly is clearly visible and easy to grasp, use a clamp to remove the hook, or, alternatively, use a loop of old fly line or heavy tippet to remove the hook by looping it around the tippet and sliding it down to the bend of the hook to pull it out. There’s an accessory, whose trade name is Ketchem Release, which does the same thing. Removing the hook without touching the fish (a “no-touch release”) is ideal. Barbless hooks or “de-barbed” hooks should be standard usage.

6) If the fish is exhausted and seems unable to immediately swim to safety, cradle the fish facing the current until it swims away on its own. If in still water, move the fish forward only, not backward and forward, as backward flow can harm the gills.

Photographing fish

If you’re alone, photograph the fish in the net, in the water. Never “beach” a fish.

Best to have someone else take photographs of you and a fish. Keep the fish in the water until the camera is ready. Hold the fish just above the water’s surface. By convention, the fish should be facing open water for photographs. It’s best not to hold a fish at arm’s length to make it appear larger than it really is. It keeps the fish out of the water longer. Maximum “airtime” is 10 seconds, 5 seconds is preferred. (Again, try holding your breath underwater after exercising until you are slightly short of breath. That’s the equivalent of holding a captured fish out of water!)

Ethics and Courtesy

Apart from being careful in handling fish, an angler is courteous to other anglers, respectful of private property and protective of the environment and habitat.

Keep a respectful distance from other anglers. If a fish rises between you and another, offer the opportunity to cast to the fish to the other angler first, and cast to it only after they decline.

Keep a bag in your pack and pick up litter as you leave the river. This assumes, of course, that you never leave any of your own. This includes bits of tippet you trim and discard. They persist in the environment and can harm wildlife.

A final note about the fallacy that “cruelty to animals” applies to fishing

Some beginning anglers, and even some who have enjoyed fishing for many years harbor the concern that fishing is “cruel.” Empathy is a virtue, but they are mistaken.

Fishing is not cruel because fish do not have the neurological machinery to experience what we know as “suffering.” Yes, fish feel pain and are afraid of being caught, but pain and fear evoke suffering only in higher order species that have developed brain structures required for the experience of suffering, as humans experience it. All mammals have the capacity to “suffer,” perhaps birds do also. It’s questionable about squid and other cephalopods. But fish, amphibians and most reptiles do not possess the capacity to experience suffering as we do; it’s counterintuitive, but true. Cruelty exists only in the infliction of suffering, by intent or by effect. We can, therefore, enjoy the recreation of fishing and conserve this wonderful resource without qualms for the “feelings” of the fish.