Learn How to Strike & Set the Hook When Fly Fishing

Video Transcript

"I’m Jim Dowd with zoaroutdoor.com. We are here for expertvillage.com, and this session is all about fly casting and what you need to know to sling it out there. You’ve just made a wonderful cast and your fly is out there floating down the river and a trout comes up and eats your fly. What do you do next? In order to set the hook into the trout’s mouth, you need to strike him as we call it. There are two different methods of striking. Actually there are more but the two that you need to know are the tip strike and the slip strike. Both have advantages. The tip strike is used most often when you are dry fly fishing. That’s where the fly that is floating on the surface and you see the trout come up and eat it from the surface; and the way it works is it all depends on your reaction time. You have to hit the fish as quickly as possible, but gently. You just simply lift the rod and set the hook. If the fish has the hook in its mouth, you will feel the bend in your rod and the game is on. Sometimes however with a sunken fly like a streamer or wet fly, if you do that, you’ll miss the fish, because they’ll come from a great distance and they’ll attack the fly, and you are moving the fly at the same time. If they miss the fly, the game is over. If you pull the fly away from them, they don’t see them anymore. So in that case we use a technique which we call a strip strike, and it looks something like this. We are using the 2 point control system, the line is anchored against the cork grip, we got the line in our hand, fish hits the fly, and you strip strike. Notice I just moved the fly less than a couple of feet. If the fish missed the fly, he still sees it. He can go and hit it again. If the fish is on the line, then you lift the tip and you feel it. So remember the difference; for dry flies, the tip strike works just fine, but not for wet flies and sunken flies. That one you want to use to strip strike where you pull the line through the 2 point control system, then lift the rod tip. You will hook far more fish that way, much more solidly. "