Learning to Cast

Casting Concepts

Understanding fish habitat and behavior coupled with effective casting abilities are what separate the successful angler from the angler who occasionally makes a catch. You can be the best caster, but if you don’t know the best target areas to shoot for your skill does you little good. On the other hand, if you understand where fish should be hiding out, but you can’t get your bait to that area, again your knowledge does you little good. Becoming an effective caster involves an understanding of the equipment, learning the fundamentals of different types of casts, and practice.

Regardless of what type of equipment you select to fish with, certain skills need to be developed with any that you select. Accuracy is of utmost importance and to become accurate in different situations you must be able to control distance and be versatile in a number of ways.

Casting Accuracy

Accuracy is the ability to cast your lure/bait to the spot you want it to land. Many times, the best fishing spots are around structure such as trees, brush, boat docks, piers, and rocks. Some situations require you to be able to get your bait within a three-inch area without getting hung-up in the mean time. Being in that three-inch area or an inch or two outside that area may mean the difference of catching a record fish and not catching a fish at all. Sometimes you have only one chance at hitting the spot because a misplaced lure may spook the fish.

Practice for accuracy does not have to take place on the water. You can do it in a number of places, including your living room. I wouldn’t try an overhead cast in your living room but flipping and pitching can be practiced with little danger. Most people practice in their yard. Never practice with hooks. Backyard Bass supplies casting plugs you can use to practice casting with your Backyard Bass Starter kit.

Always practice with a target. A target can be a number of things…. a hula hoop, rope or lawn hose drawn in a circle, wastepaper baskets. Yards normally contain many natural targets… trees, shrubs, and rocks. Using your Backyard Bass kit, you can set up several fish at different locations to challenge your abilities to hook and reel in a fish. When first learning to cast with new equipment, place or use a target in an open area until you begin to develop some control and begin hitting your target. Then you can move to more complicated targets like the base of trees and points under the shrubs.

Casting Distance

Many beginning anglers like to see how far they can cast. However, distance without accuracy is useless. Being able to control distance is part of accuracy. You first need to judge how far a target is away and then cast that distance.

Rarely do anglers need to make long cast. Some anglers fishing from the shoreline think the farther they get their bait the better chance they’ll have of catching fish. However, in many situations the fish may be within five feet of their feet. They may have better luck casting right down the shoreline. There are situations where being able to cast a long distance is important. You may see fish surfacing after some bait fish a long way out. If you can reach them, you’ll have a chance of catching those fish. When fishing some deep crank baits, making a long cast is important because the lure will stay deeper longer. Usually in this situation, you have figured out what depth the fish are at and are fishing parallel to the bank so that the lure will stay in that depth the maximum amount of time.

Casting Versatility

To achieve accuracy in a variety of situations an angler has to be versatile. An angler may have one favorite rod and reel, but rarely does he/she utilize the same kind of lure or bait every time they go. You may be in different water conditions or fishing for different kinds of fish and therefore use a variety of pound tests for your line which effects casting. Rarely are the wind conditions the same and even throughout one day of fishing an angler may have to adapt to many changes in the wind. Your casting may be done while you sit, stand on uneven shoreline or rocks, bounce around in a boat, stand in waist deep water, or half bent over under a tree limb. 

Versatility can be learned through practice. While practicing in the yard, change the weight of your casting plug, use different pound test line, put yourself into some of the positions that you may encounter on your fishing trips. Practice on windy days and rainy days.

To be versatile also means knowing more than one way of casting so that you can use the best technique for the bait you select and the conditions you are fishing in. Many avid anglers keep more than one rod handy so they can easily switch to match the condition. They may be using an overhand cast to get their crankbait out a good distance, then come along a nice overhanging tree. They may use a underhand cast to slide their lure under the tree. If that doesn’t produce they may switch to a soft plastic bait and flip it to the base of the tree. These are three different kinds of casts that all anglers should practice to become accurate at casting in a variety of conditions.

But remember, the key to successful casting is practice!

This information used courtesy of the Future Fisherman Foundation