How To Hold a Fly Fishing Rod

Video Transcript

"Hi! This is David Dirks, managing director of Outdoors, on behalf of Expert Village. Today we are going to talk about fly fishing basics. The next thing we are going to do is look at some fly casting and do a demo. One of the first things we are going to do that is run our fly line through our rod guides and I have a quick technique for that. One of the quickest ways to rig up your rod after you get your reel on is to take the fly line itself, bend it so it's like so and then just run this bend through each of the eyes on your rod. One of the first things you are going to want to do before we start fly casting is making sure we have our fly hand. I'm left handed and my fly casting hand is going to be on the handle and my thumb is going to be placed appropriately on the top of the handle itself so that basically I have a grip that looks something like you are seeing now. After you check your grip to see that you have a good grip, then make sure that you kind of have your legs spread apart a little bit but not too close and now note this. We are actually start casting on using sort of a clock method. What we are going to do if this is 12:00 on our clock going straight up and down where the numerals 12:00 would be, this is going to be the 2:00 o'clock position and this is going to be about the 10:00 o'clock position. So you've got 10:00 o'clock and 2:00 o'clock. You are going to find out how important that is right now. When we cast and we do our basic casting maneuvers, you will see me here going 10:00 o'clock, 2:00 o'clock, 10:00 o'clock and 2:00 o'clock, 10:00 o'clock and 2:00 o'clock. A lot of beginners make the mistake of going back too far or coming back here and what that does and you come back and go to the 9:00 o'clock position, that will pile your line. The most appropriate way and for most fishing positions to cast, is to move the rod back and forth to the 10:00 o'clock, 2:00 o'clock, 10:00 o'clock, 2:00 o'clock, 10:00 o'clock, 2:00 o'clock. Notice that I am stopping the rod."