Basics on HookedLee

What causes a tailing loop, and how do I fix it?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A tailing loop is the fault where the fly leg drops below the rod leg and the two legs cross. On the water you see the leader and fly tuck under the line; in the air the loop looks like it closes on itself. It is the single most common fault in the CI exam and the easiest one to cure, because it always comes back to one question: what did the rod tip do?

What actually causes it

Three things put the tip on a dip:

Power applied too early. The rod bends hardest at the start of the stroke, so the tip travels in a concave path — down, then up. This is the classic cause. The fix is to start the stroke slowly and accelerate to an abrupt stop.
Too narrow a casting arc for the amount of line. The rod has to bend and unbend through a wide enough angle to keep the tip travelling in a straight line. With a lot of line out and a short arc, the tip dips.
Creep. After the stop, the rod drifts forward before the next stroke starts. That eats the arc you needed and turns a straight tip path into a concave one.

The FFI documents separate these into four causes, because creep on its own and creep combined with inappropriate power behave differently on the water: What are the four causes of a tailing loop? sets them out with the exam wording and the sources.

How to fix it

Slow the start. Begin the stroke with the hand barely moving and let the acceleration build. Say it out loud if it helps: slow, then fast.
Widen the arc until the fault stops, then narrow it again in small steps. A wider arc never hurts while you are learning.
Watch the stop. The stop should be abrupt and complete. The rod tip rebounds; if your hand keeps drifting, the tip dips and you are back in tailing-loop territory.
Check the line hand. Yanking line during the stroke has the same effect as adding power too early.

Practice drill

Lay a tape at 40 ft and false cast with a deliberately wide arc, watching only the loop. When the loop is smooth, narrow the arc two degrees at a time. The moment the tail returns, go back one step. Ten minutes of this is worth more than an hour of blind casting.

If you are preparing for the exam, the fault and its correction are described in the FFI’s own vocabulary — see FFI Fly Casting Definitions (2025 Edition) for tailing loop, concave tip path and creep, and The Double Haul for how the same tip-path rules apply when you add hauling.

What are the four causes of a tailing loop?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A tailing loop is a loop whose fly leg dips and crosses the rod leg. Every one of them comes back to a single mechanical fact: the rod tip travelled a concave path — it dipped out of the straight line it should have tracked — and the fly leg follows the tip. Four causes put that dip there.

The root cause is always the tip path

The definitions call a tailing loop “a Loop with a Concave Fly Leg, which dips towards and crosses Rod Leg”, and a concave fly leg “a Fly Leg which is not Straight and dips toward Rod Leg”. The fly leg mirrors what the rod tip did, so looking for a cause always means looking for what made the tip dip.

The CI Study Guide states it as a rule: “A concave rod tip path is the root cause of all tailing loops. The concavity is caused by either using too small a casting arc, failure to smoothly apply force, or both.”

The four causes

1. A casting arc that is too narrow

The casting arc is the angle the rod butt turns through during the stroke — it has to be wide enough to keep the tip travelling straight for the amount of line you carry and the force you apply. In the Study Guide’s terms, this is the right amount of energy applied over too short a distance: “If that proper amount of energy is applied over too short a distance (narrow casting arc) there will be a tailing loop due to the resulting concave tip path.”

What it looks like: tails on both the forward and the back cast, worse the more line you carry. Stopping the rod too early narrows the arc without the caster noticing; the tip path rises through the deceleration and then dips. The Study Guide adds that stopping early is not a common problem with typical students — the arc is usually just too small for the line being carried.
The fix: widen the arc — a longer stroke, stopping later. Reducing force to suit the narrow arc only costs line speed, which is why widening is the real answer.

2. Inappropriate power application

Force has to be applied in the right amount at the right place in the stroke. The rod should bend and unbend smoothly, accelerating at roughly the same rate from the start of the stroke to the end. A sudden burst anywhere — a power spike — makes the tip dip and rise, and the fly leg dips with it.

The error to look for is the common one the Study Guide calls one of the two most common causes of tailing loops: accelerating the rod slowly at the beginning of the stroke and then quickly at the end. It shows up when a caster “gives it one” to find extra distance.

What it looks like: tails on the casts where you try harder, a rod that whistles or bounces at the stop, a loop that collapses only when you meant to push.
Worth knowing: the mirror-image error — very fast early, then slowing — would also cause a tail, but the Study Guide notes it is difficult to do and rare in students. It is not where practice time belongs.

3. Creep

The definitions call drag “moving rod tip in direction of next cast during Pause”, and creep “drag which contributes to a casting fault”. Between strokes the rod drifts forward toward where the next cast is going, and the caster does not feel it.

Creep does not bend the tip path on its own. It eats the arc: the next stroke starts from a narrower arc than the caster believes, which is what makes it the quiet setup for a tail.

What it looks like: the first casts are clean and later ones tail; the tail appears after a long pause — more line out, a fish rising, a moment’s thought — and disappears again once you get back into a casting rhythm.
The fix: stop the rod and leave it stopped. Many casters find it helps to think of the pause as part of the stroke rather than as a rest.

4. Creep combined with inappropriate power application

This is the combination, and it is the one that produces most tails on the water. Creep narrows the effective arc, the caster feels the cast going soft, adds force unevenly to compensate, and the tip path goes concave. Either fault alone might have got away with it; together they do not.

The Study Guide is explicit about the condition: “Creep (drag which leads to casting fault) can contribute to a tailing loop if drag results in too narrow a casting arc and the caster then applies power inappropriately.”

Telling them apart

What you see	Most likely cause
Tails on every cast, worse the more line you carry	Arc too narrow
Tails only on the casts where you try harder	Power application
First casts clean, later false casts tail, worse after a pause	Creep
Tails after a pause, and worse when you add power to fix them	Creep plus power
Tails on the forward cast after a stop that felt early	Arc narrowed by stopping early

What the exam asks for

Task 3 of the performance exam requires you to demonstrate a tailing loop and to say which cause you used. The standard is that it “must result from concavity of the rod tip path caused primarily by one of two common caster actions that result in tailing loops (improper force application and/or a casting arc that is too narrow)”.

Teaching Task 20 goes further: the candidate has to explain how creep might contribute to a tailing loop, which is the fourth cause above.

Fixing it

The correction depends on the cause, but the drill is the same: slow the start of the stroke, widen the arc until the tail stops, watch the stop, and keep the line hand quiet. What causes a tailing loop, and how do I fix it? works through the fixes, and What makes a loop tight? explains the arc-and-tip-path relationship in more depth.

Sources

CI Performance Exam 2025, Task 3 — demonstrate a tail and name the cause used; the wording above is from the exam document.
CI Study Guide 2025 (PDF, 2.4 MB) — the tip-path explanation, the two most common causes, and the Teaching Task 20 notes quoted here.
Teaching Task 20: teach the cause and correction of tailing loops.
FFI Fly Casting Definitions (2025 Edition) — Tailing Loop, Concave Fly Leg, Casting Arc, Drag and Creep; the same terms as cards: Tailing Loop, Creep, Casting Arc.
FFI Common Faults and Fixes (April 2026) — under “Excessive or Uneven Force”: “If force is applied erratically or is suddenly applied too hard at some point during the casting stroke, the rod tip will dip and rise, causing a dip in the fly leg and perhaps a tailing loop.”

What makes a loop tight?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A tight loop is narrow, pointed and travels fast. A wide loop is round, slow and lands softly. Neither is better in the abstract — the exam asks for both — but almost everyone wants tighter, because a tight loop cuts wind and carries distance.

The two levers

1. Tip path. The loop is a mirror of what the rod tip did. If the tip tracks in a straight line, the top and bottom legs stay parallel and the loop is tight. Dip the tip and the legs converge into a tail; arc the tip and the loop opens.

2. The angle between the legs. Hold the rod still at the end of the stroke and the legs stay close together. That angle is set by the stop, not by the speed of the stroke. A hard stop with a small arc gives the tightest loop.

What opens a loop

Wide arc. More rod rotation means the tip travels further round a curve, so the legs spread.
Late stop / soft stop. Letting the rod drift forward after the stop opens the loop and costs you distance.
Too much line for the arc. The line cannot keep up with the tip, so the loop balloons.
A soft, slow stroke. Without enough acceleration the rod never loads properly, and an unloaded rod cannot turn a stroke into line speed.

Practical recipe

For a tight loop: take the shortest arc that still lets the rod bend, accelerate smoothly to a hard stop, and keep the line hand quiet. Introduce hauling only after the loop is already tight without it — see The Double Haul for that sequence.

For a wide, soft loop (useful for delicate dry-fly work and for the teaching tasks): open the arc, ease the stop, and let the rod do less work.

The vocabulary for all of this — loop, fly leg, rod leg, casting arc, casting stroke — is defined on the FFI Fly Casting Definitions page, and those are the terms an examiner will use.

What is the double haul actually doing?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The double haul is the technique that separates a comfortable 60 ft cast from a 90 ft cast. It looks like a tug-of-war between the two hands: as the rod strokes forward, the line hand pulls down, then the hands come back together on the back cast and repeat.

Where the speed comes from

Two things happen when you haul:

The line accelerates through the guides. Your line hand is pulling line, not just holding it. That motion is added directly to the line’s speed, and speed is what carries distance.
The rod loads deeper. A haul on the back cast increases the tension the rod bends against, so the rod stores more energy for the forward stroke.

The haul has to stop before the cast unrolls. Pull too late and you take speed away at exactly the moment the loop forms; pull too early and the extra line arrives while the rod is still bending forward.

Sequence for a forward cast

Rod strokes forward; line hand is relaxed, line still.
As the rod passes vertical, the line hand accelerates downward.
The haul snaps to a stop as the rod stops.
The hands return together — the line hand must give the line back so the shoot can happen.

The three faults worth naming

Hauling with the rod hand. Both hands move down together, so the tip dips: a tailing loop with a haul bolted on.
No return. The line hand keeps the line it pulled, so the shoot stalls and the cast lands short.
Tension lost between hauls. The line goes slack mid-stroke, the rod unloads early, and the loop collapses.

The timing detail, the three faults and the drills that fix them are worked through in The Double Haul: Timing, Line Speed, and the Three Faults That Kill It.

What is mending, and when do I need it?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Mending is what you do after the cast lands. The fly is in the right place, but the line between you and the fly is lying across water that moves at a different speed. Left alone, the faster water grabs the line and tows the fly — that is drag, and it kills the presentation.

A mend puts a curve or a stack in the line, so there is slack to pay out before the fly starts moving.

The three mends you actually need

Upstream mend. From a downstream position, flick the rod tip upstream so the line lands above the fly. The belly of line then feeds the drift before it tightens.
Reach mend. Extend the rod upstream during the cast so the line lands in a curve without an extra motion. Quietest of the three, and the one to use when fish are spooky.
Slack-line / S-cast. Lay the line in an S across the current so different seams feed line at different times.

When to mend, and when to walk

Mend when the current between you and the fly is faster or slower than the current the fly is in. If the fish is close or the water is uniform, mending can do more harm than good: every mend moves the fly a little, and on flat water that is enough to spook a fish.

The alternative to mending is repositioning — move your feet so the line lies in friendlier water. It takes longer, but it is always cleaner.

Mending, drag, dead drift and slack line are all terms in the FFI Fly Casting Definitions; the mechanics of the reach mend are covered in the CI exam tasks on reach mends in the exam section.

What is drag, and how do I beat it?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Drag is the single biggest reason a trout refuses a fly that looks perfect. The fish does not see a fly and a line — it sees a small object behaving impossibly. A natural insect drifts with the current; a dragged fly skates, sinks unnaturally or tips sideways. On a clear pool, a trout will often move away rather than take.

The causes

Fast water between you and the fly. The line is in a quicker seam than the fly, so it tows it.
A bad casting angle. Casting straight across a current makes the line cross several speeds.
Wind on the line. Even on a dead-calm surface, wind can push a floating line faster than the drift.
Too little slack. A straight line from rod tip to fly is a lever: the moment the current tightens it, the fly moves.

Four ways to beat it

Change your position. Fish from below, from above, or from the bank so the line lies in water moving at the same speed as the fly.
Mend immediately after the cast. An upstream or reach mend buys seconds of drag-free drift.
Use more slack. A slack-line or S-cast lays line in curves; the drift consumes the curves before it moves the fly.
Go under the surface. A nymph below a fast surface layer is far less affected: the leader can drag without moving the fly out of the zone. That is one reason nymphing is so effective in broken water.

Reading it

Watch the line, not the fly. The moment the line straightens or starts to accelerate, the drift is over — pick up and cast again rather than fishing out a dragging drift. A drift measured in seconds is normal; a drift measured in tens of seconds is a fish.

What is a dead drift?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A dead drift is the target state of almost all dry-fly and nymph fishing: the fly moves with the water and nothing else. No drag, no skate, no unnatural sink rate. When people say they are getting a good drift, this is what they mean.

What breaks a dead drift

Line drag. The line is in a faster seam and pulls the fly.
Leader drag. The leader is heavier or thicker than the fly, so it tows it even when the line is mended. Long fine leaders and soft presentation help.
Angular drag. You are casting across the current, so the fly sweeps sideways even when the line is slack.
Your own movement. Shuffling your feet moves the rod tip, which moves the fly.

How to get one

Position first. Stand so the fly drifts toward you or across-and-down with the line in matching water.
Cast with slack. Reach mends, S-casts and slack-line casts put curves in the line; the drift spends those curves instead of moving the fly.
Mend early, not late. One mend as the line lands is worth three after the fly has moved.
Follow with the rod. Let the rod tip track the fly downstream so the line stays straight to the fly without pulling it.
Re-cast rather than salvage. Once the drift is dragging, pick up. A new cast is cheap; a spooked fish is not.

How long should a drift be?

Long enough to cover the lie, no longer. In pocket water a two-second drift through the right seam takes fish; on a slow flat pool a thirty-second drift may be needed because the fly has to travel a long way to reach the fish. Judge it by whether the fly is still dead-drifting, not by the clock.

What is the difference between a leader and tippet?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

They sit in the same place in the system, which is why beginners mix them up. The distinction is about function and replacement, not about position.

Leader

The leader is the whole length between the fly line and the fly, usually 7.5–12 ft. It is tapered: thick at the butt so it can transfer the energy of the fly line, thin at the point so the fly lands softly. A leader is a single unit — you buy it or build it, and you fish it until it gets too short.

Tippet

Tippet is the fine, level material you tie onto the end of the leader. It has two jobs: replace the length you lose to fly changes and break-offs, and let you change diameter without changing the whole leader. The number — 4X, 5X, 6X — describes the diameter, and there is a trade-off: thinner sinks faster and spooks fewer fish, but breaks more easily and turns over big flies badly.

A working rule

Situation	Rough choice
Big dry flies, wind, distance	3X–4X
Standard trout dries, 12–16	4X–5X
Small dries, clear water, spooky fish	5X–6X
Nymphs, streamers	3X–4X (or finer for tiny nymphs)

Add tippet when the leader has lost about 18 in / 45 cm — normally after a handful of fly changes. A loop-to-loop or double-surgeon’s join is enough; there is no need to rebuild a tapered leader by hand.

The reason the taper matters at all comes back to the cast: energy has to travel from the thick, heavy fly line into a thin, light leader without collapsing the loop. That transfer is described in the FFI Fly Casting Definitions under leader and turnover.

How do I read a trout stream?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Trout hold where three conditions overlap: food delivered, slow water to sit in, and cover from predators. Reading water is the skill of finding those overlaps before you cast, and it usually matters more than fly choice.

The four places fish live

Seams. Where fast water meets slow. The fish sits in the slow side and eats what the fast side brings. Fish the edge, not the middle.
Behind structure. Boulders, log jams, bridge pilings. The pocket directly behind a rock is slower than the water either side, and it is where the biggest fish in a riffle usually sits.
Ledges and drop-offs. A depth change concentrates fish because it gives them deep water to retreat into and shallow water to feed in.
Foam lines and bubble trails. These mark a current seam on the surface. Food collects there. Follow the foam.

Read the surface, then the depth

The surface tells you where the currents are; the water colour and chop tell you where the depth changes. Look for:

Nervous water — a small boil or a hump in the surface that does not repeat with the current. Usually a fish moving.
Colour changes — a darker patch often means deeper water or a different bottom.
Riffle-glades — the slow water beside a riffle is the most reliable dry-fly lie on the river.

Work upstream, and fish the close water first

Approach from below so you are behind the fish’s window, and cover the water nearest you before the water further out. The fish you spook with your first cast is usually the closest one — the one you did not see because you were looking at the far bank.

For how presentation changes with each of these lies, see What is drag, and how do I beat it? and What is a dead drift?.

What do trout actually eat?

example@example.com (HookedLee) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The single most useful fact in fly selection is that a trout’s diet is dominated by what is easy to catch in quantity, not by what is most visible to you. Most of it is underwater and most of it is small.

The main groups

Aquatic insects — mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies and midges. Each has a lifecycle: nymph (underwater), emerger (at the surface), adult (on the surface and in the air). Trout eat them at every stage, and they eat nymphs far more often than adults.
Terrestrials — ants, beetles, grasshoppers, caterpillars. Seasonally important, especially on windy days when they blow onto the water.
Crustaceans and worms — scuds, shrimp, aquatic worms. Often the bulk of the diet in spring creeks and tailwaters.
Fish and eggs — larger trout eat smaller fish; eggs matter during spawning runs.

What this means on the water

Match the size first. Size and profile beat exact colour most days.
Fish the depth the food is at. A perfect mayfly dun skated over a fish that is eating nymphs at the bottom will be ignored.
Look for the odd one out. If you see three caddis and one mayfly, fish the mayfly — the fish see caddis all day.
Learn four or five patterns properly. A hare’s ear nymph, a pheasant tail, an elk hair caddis, a parachute Adams and a Woolly Bugger cover most days on most rivers. Our five essential trout flies are those, with the materials list for each.

The exam-adjacent version

If you are preparing for a teaching task, the examiner is not testing your Latin. They are testing whether you can explain why a fly is the right choice for the water in front of you: what stage the insect is at, how deep the fish is feeding, and how the drift will be affected.