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IMPORTANT
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Fly
Casting - Part 3: Tailing Loops
Our March 2002 contribution from Master caster
If you get knots in your leader - known popularly, but innaccurately, as wind knots - the problem is caused, most likely, by a tailing loop.
These so-called wind knots are better known as casting knots, although a poor caster will have more on windy days - because they result from bad casting made worse by the wind - not the wind.
A good casting loop is open with both sides of the loop parallel as it unrolls. This is true for both wide loops and narrow loops. A tailing loop is caused by the business end of the line falling below the line coming from the rod tip, and the leader or fly catching the line. To prevent a tailing loop, you must make sure that the tip of your rod moves out of the way of the fly line as the loop unrolls forwards. The reason the rod tip is in the path of the fly line is because of bad technique and timing.
Unloading the rod too soon or too quickly means that the tip of the rod will stop above the path of the line that makes the bottom of the loop. In a bad tailing loop, the fly may well hit your rod. Casting should be a smooth and continuous movement - not erratic and jerky. It is easier to make a cast with a continuous build-up of speed and energy over a longer casting stroke, ending in a power snap, than it is with a short casting stroke.
Applying power erratically is another cause of tailing loops. This will often result in the rod tip getting in the way of the line because the rod may have followed a concave path rather than a straight line. The rod tip should follow a straight line during both back and forward casts. To keep the rod tip in a straight line it can help to imagine that it is a paint brush which you are using to paint a ceiling, with a backward and forward motion. If the rod tip moves away from that straight path, and describes an arc, then a tailing loop will result. Raising your elbow during forward and back casts will make the rod tip follow a curved path, not the straight path that we want and result in a tailing loop.
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Good casts have a different feel from bad casts. Good casts feel right. Some of that feel comes from the continuous tension that results from your rod being fully loaded. You will know it when you have made a good cast. Your timing will be right and you will have applied acceleration and power at the right time. Note that it is acceleration first and then power, not vice versa.
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Always try to reduce the number of false casts. With the first couple
of false casts you start to build some line speed. Another false cast
will produce more line speed. And then another. If that one produced more
speed, then surely another will result in even more? Sadly, and too often,
the end result is a disastrous cast: a tailing loop of unimaginable proportions
or a messy heap of line, not far from your feet. What happens is that
with each extra false cast, you simply run out of energy and there is
an overwhelming temptation with the last false cast to apply that bit
of extra power at the start of the stroke instead of the end. Never make
that last false cast! The extra false cast and the desire to make the
last cast even more powerful are death to a good cast. Once again, never
make that last false cast.