How to Cast a Fly Rod With a Sink-Tip Line

Video Transcript

"So the question arises is how do we cast sink tipped lines? Because essentially the fish are on all different levels and zones. If we're on the river or even in the lake, the basic principle that we want to use is what we learned in the basic roll cast. When the roll cast is made and the rod has stopped, that allows the line to continue in a circular direction as it goes forward. So the cast is made and the line pivots and makes a circle in the water. So every time it makes a roll it lifts it up higher in to the water column. That is the easiest way to bring up a sink tip line or sinking line so you can then finish the cast either with the roll cast or the overhead cast or even in spay casting. So now we'll demonstrate that with a floating line so you can see it and understand the same principles. Ok, we have our sink tipped line, it comes up like this, we set it like this, now we're going to roll it. See how the line rolls around? You can see the line making the turn. See how it turns around? Let me get it so it doesn't hook. There it rolls, there you can see it roll that way. Here we go again. Roll. See the line roll? There, see how it rolls? Every time you do that it rolls it up. So, essentially you're going to combine a roll cast with the finishing cast to get the line to sink up. To pick up. Here's our basic roll cast. Roll, drop our line, go in to our spay cast, and there it is, it picks the sink tip line up. What you must do when you are doing the sink tip cast, you must make it all happen very quickly because otherwise the sinking line will sink. The other alternative is to make a roll cast which we call a roll cast pickup off the right shoulder, which will then cause the line to snake around and then complete the cast so it looks like this. We can hold the rod off this hand like this so what we're going to do is originate the cast off the right shoulder. Looking like this, we roll it, see it snake around? Then we make the transition and there's the cast. That's called the Scandinavian way of picking up sink tipped lines. It's picked up off the side, it's popped up, it comes around, there your water load and there's your cast."