Basics · a card
How do I cast a slack-line presentation that still catches fish?
Stop, drop the rod and follow the line down so the slack piles up behind the fly, not at the rod tip: the fish sees the fly before it sees any line, and drifts drag-free until the current eats the slack.
A slack-line cast puts the slack behind the fly. The examiner asks what changes with an aerial mend, and what each version is for.
What the instructor says
- Without the mend: stop, drop, follow it down. “Stop, drop, cast and now just follow it down.” Jerk it down and you pull line back: “that is now an Aerial Mend”, with pile at the rod tip.
- With the mend: wiggle the tip. Cast, stop, “wiggle your rod tip” before the line lands; the fly still lands near 30 feet. Higher, more level, a higher stop, slower: more wiggles.
- The slow-stop version. “A really slow, continuous stop until my rod almost hits the surface” lets the top leg die and dump; more accurate at varying distances, especially in wind.
- Why it catches fish. “The fish gets to see the fly before it sees anything else”, then drifts drag-free until the current eats the slack. He fishes it upstream on Silver Creek and the Hams Fork.
Putting it to work
- Read the tip end. From the tip, the first half of the line should be straight; pile means you jerked it.
- Hold the 30-foot cone. Three or four feet off is fine, 15 is not; into six or seven miles an hour of headwind, lower it and add speed.
- Count on 8 to 10 feet of slack, enough to feed a fish at 40 feet.
Source
From the FFI CI walkthrough series by Dayle Mazzarella (Chapter 3 — FFI Casting Instructor Certification Tasks, Fly Fishing Coach International), lesson 7, 00:00:19. See the video library and the task pages for the exam wording; terms follow the FFI Fly Casting Definitions.