Learn to Use a Side Arm Cast When Fly Fishing

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Jim Dowd with Zoar Outdoor. I’m here on behalf of expertvillage.com to talk with you about fly casting and fly fishing. The side arm cast is a wonderful tool to have in your fly fishing skill set. The side arm cast allows you to do a number of things, but the 3 big ones are it will cheat the wind. In other words, the cast is down low and if you’ve got a wind blowing, it has less effect on the fly and your cast than if it is up high. The wind because of the friction of the water surface is a little less strong down low. The second thing it will do, and this is a really big one if you are pushing in tight quarters, is it allows you to cast underneath an obstacle so that you can present a fly in a place like in a shady overhanging brush situation where a trout or a bass or a game fish might be lurking. The third thing is that a side arm cast, because it is low, doesn’t present an overhead movement which might startle your prey, and so as a result, a cast like this which might frighten a fish because it comes crashing down to the surface, comes in low and doesn’t alarm them. So practice your side arm cast. It is a wonderful cast. You can use it both forward and backwards. Practice this one so that you’ve accuracy on this as well. It is a marvelous tool and it will catch you lots of fish. "