let's face it if you're fly fishing you're gonna have to deal with
wind it's gonna happen and there are a few things you can do to make
fishing and wind a little bit more fun a little bit more successful and less frustrating
the first thing you can do is to shorten and stiffen your tippet wind can blow that tippet all
over the place and a longer tippet is going to get pushed back by the wind and the fly's not going to
go where you want it to so shorten your tippet and sometimes even go to a heavier tidbit even if you
think it's a little bit too heavy for what you're doing fish generally aren't as spooky in the wind
so you can generally go with the heavier tidbits now another way is to shorten up your casts don't
try to make a hero cast in the wind try to get close to the fish if you can if you have to make
a long cast just know that you may hook yourself or you may end up getting frustrated so if you can
try to get your boat or yourself closer to the fish and make those short casts so if you have
a wind blowing at you as i do here the best thing to do is to make a cast and make sure on a forward
cast that you drop your elbow dropping the elbow is going to slice your line down through the wind
so just when you cast raise your elbow and lower your elbow if you cast and you push
into the wind if you push you'll know you've been pushing because you look out here at the
end of the cast and your arms way out here what you're doing with a headwind is you're just
pushing straight against the wind rather than slicing down through it so if you find yourself
reaching way out here when you cast try dropping that elbow and slicing down through the wind
if you've got a wind behind you usually easier to make a cast because you got the wind giving you
some help and it often helps to make a belgian cast which is to bring your rod off to the side
on the back cast and then straight over the top on the forward cast that'll keep your cast lower
lower to the ground where there's less wind in fact the belgian cast is a really good cast to
use in any windy situation so it's very simply just do your back cast at an angle off to the side
come over the top and come down if you have a wind coming across your body so
that your rod hand is on the far side that's probably one of the best situations to be in
you can use that belgian cast and come over the top but the wind is going to blow the fly away
from you so that you're not going to be in danger of hooking yourself when you get a gust of wind
if you've got wind coming toward your rod side of course when you make cast that's going to
blow the fly into you so it can be dangerous number of things you can do if the wind is
fairly mild and not too bad you can use that belgian cast and come over and go over the top
that'll work sometimes but if the wind really starts to blow you've got to keep that cast on
the other side of your body so that you don't hook yourself so there's a number of things you can do
one is to just cast across the opposite shoulder by bringing your thumb up to your opposite ear
so i'm going to make a cast and i'm casting across the opposite shoulder rather than this shoulder
as i normally would again that's going to keep that back cast to the other side
and keep it away from me and you can also what you can also do is you can turn around
make your cast in that direction and dump your back cast so you can either go across
here or you can turn around and make like you're casting in that direction
but dropping your back cast when you're dropping that back cast for a cast
one of the things we tend to do is we tend to curl the rod tip around our body you want to make sure
that that rod tip goes in a straight line just as it always should and pete kutzer the great
casting instructor tells me all the time to point your shoulder at where you want the fly to go then
make the cast and deliver it to that side casting in the wind isn't always fun there are some days
when you may just want to quit and that's totally okay but if you keep your cast short pay attention
to where your fly is going you can deal with a moderate amount of wind without much trouble
so
you