Whether it’s bait, lure or fly fishing - if you’re going to catch a fish on rod and line you probably need to know how to cast a fishing rod!
Shore Fishing: One of many fishing methods where you can learn multiple styles of casting (photo: Glen Rushton on Unsplash)
Quick Intro to "How to Cast a Fishing Rod"
Understanding just a tiny bit about what makes a cast work helps to avoid some frustrations (either in casting for yourself – or teaching someone else). Luckily, there are a few things that apply to all rod and line casting – no matter what style of fishing you’re doing.
That’s why we’ll start out with a very short intro to explain those things that will give you a better chance of success without frustration. Below that, you’ll find clear instructions on how to cast with all different kinds of rods and reels.
The rod has two main functions - to act as:
Because the rod is longer than your arm on its own, there is greater leverage to “throw” your casting weight further. This is the rod acting as a lever (basically a throwing stick). At the same time, the rod bends and straightens during the cast. That elastic rebound is what makes your rod a spring (or catapult). Also...
The rod needs something to cast!
In all casting, the rod needs to “throw” a weight in order to send your hook out. In most types of fishing, that weight is concentrated into a particular point – either in/on the lure or a sinker of some kind. Fly fishing is unusual in that the main line itself is the weight that the rod casts.
With that said, it doesn’t matter if it is fly fishing or any other style, the rod uses leverage and elastic rebound to move the weight.
Some other things that are common to casting in all styles of rod and line fishing:
- The weight MUST start out on the side of the rod that is OPPOSITE the target (otherwise, the rod can’t “load up” and bend – ready to catapult the casting weight towards the target). It would be a bit like not pulling the string back on a bow in archery.
- You need to match the amount of casting weight to the strength and stiffness of the rod
- Too much weight means the rod will collapse and not be able to rebound strongly enough to throw the weight. It might even break your rod
- Too little weight, and the rod will not bend and you will just have a rigid “throwing stick” – which is like fitting your slingshot with string instead of elastic
- This is why different rods are rated for different casting weights (or casting line-weights) – so make sure your rod is a good match for what you’ll be casting
- Your line is another key factor in learning how to cast a fishing rod. In almost all cases, it is important to add the right amount of line on your reel. Fortunately, we’ve already got your back on that issue! Click on the orange link text to find out how much line to put on your reel
Now for the casting instructions…
How to Cast with a Baitcaster
Casting with a “normal” baitcasting reel is a bit easier than the ultralight “Bait Finesse System style of reel. In fact, there’s a whole article on BFS casting here.
The Side-Cast option is easiest for your first casts with a baitcaster rig
Whether you’ve got a BFS reel or a regular baitcaster, you’ll need to know how to set it up. Again, we’ve got your back and here’s an article on how to set up a baitcaster.
OK – so you’ve added the right amount of line and got the settings about right; how do you actually cast a fishing rod that has a baitcaster strapped to it?? Here's a super short video and, below that, the steps listed out for a right-handed caster (just reverse the labels if you’re a left hander):
- Unless you are using a wire trace, the best thing to do is to wind in your line so that your lure is hanging as close to the tip top as possible – without snagging in the guide. This puts the casting weight right on the tip of the rod; which helps with loading the rod and also makes accuracy easier.
- For your first casts with a baitcaster, it is easier to AVOID the full “overhead cast” – because that tends to make a backlash (or bird’s nest tangle) more likely. Instead, a more “side-arm” action is a bit easier to start with (pictured above).
- Hold the trigger grip by wrapping your index finger (or your middle finger for extra support) around it and position your thumb so that it rests lightly on the spool.
- Grip the butt of the handle with your left hand and keep both your elbows tucked comfortably at your sides (try to avoid a “chicken wings” pose with your elbows out).
- Point the rod towards where you want to cast and hold it parallel to the water-surface.
- Press down the thumb-bar on your reel to release the spool (but keep your thumb on the spool to stop it turning and releasing line)
- Pull back the rod tip quickly (but not violently) around to your side keeping it roughly parallel to the water; stop when the rod BUTT is pointing at around 90-degrees from the direction you want to cast
- With the butt stopped, the rod will continue to bend – so before it straightens again, pull with your left hand and push with your right hand to point the rod back to it’s starting position. You don’t need to move your hands too far, keeping your elbows against your rib-cage helps with this.
- Just before the rod fully straightens, release your thumb so that the rod flex and lure weight can start the spool turning (the lighter the lure, the earlier you tend to have to release your thumb)
- Watch your lure as it flies out and, just before it is about to hit the water, slow the spool with your thumb. You should bring the spool to a complete stop at the exact same moment your lure splashes down
- Turn the handle on your reel to re-engage the spool
How to Cast a Fishing Rod & Spinning Reel Combo
These basic instructions apply to any style of fishing using a fixed spool (spinning) reel. A lot of similar principles to the baitcaster casting apply. However, there is usually less requirement to “load up” the rod by pulling back the casting weight to create a deep bend on the back-cast. One exception to this is shore-casting. For that style of angling, once you get beyond a basic overhead cast, there is a significant specialist skillset to learn.
Basic Overhead Cast For Accuracy with Fixed Spool Reel
For this style of casting, you don’t have any spool inertia to overcome. This means, for a basic cast, you can start out with your rod behind you.
Particularly when using a longer rod, it can be easy to catch your terminal rig and hook on the ground behind you.
To avoid this, you can look behind you and carefully move your rod into a “ready to launch” position as follows...
Instructions for a right handed caster:
- If you can stand with your left foot slightly forward, then this helps to open up your shoulders and make the cast more efficient and accurate (don't worry though, unless you're going for absolute maximum distance you can do this cast from a seated position too)
- Start out with the rod out in front of you, with the tip raised high enough to hold your rig clear of the ground/water. Don’t hold it pointing straight up though – that usually causes your line and rig to wrap round your rod and get tangled.
- With the reel hanging down below the rod, hold the rod with your right hand, so that your middle and index fingers are in front of the reel foot and your ring and pinky fingers are behind the reel foot (with your thumb pointing up along the top-side of the rod handle)
- Turn the reel handle so that the bale arm so that the line-pickup roller is at the top (closest to the rod handle). Use your right index finger to pick up the line and trap it against the rod handle)
- With the line still trapped, use your left hand to open the bale-arm (and make sure it locks in the open position)
- Hold the rod handle close to the butt-end with your left hand and keep your right hand in position – holding the line trapped against the rod with your index finger.
- Carefully swing the rod around behind you (like a construction crane turning on the spot!) until the rod tip is behind you, directly opposite – and pointing AWAY from - your target
- For the best accuracy hold your left hand straight out in front of you – about level with your nose – and with the rod passing directly over the centre of your head. You’ll need to hold your right hand high enough so that the back of that hand is just above and behind your head.
- In that position you can sight over your left hand at the target. Then you make your cast by pulling your left hand straight towards the centre-line of your body and pushing your right hand straight forwards – to exactly replace the position your left hand was in while you were “sighting” over it.
- Just a tiny fraction of a second before your right hand arrives in that position, release the line trapped under your index finger (if you release too early – your rig will fly up too high in the air and land short; if you release too late, your rig will nose-dive and bomb into the water – again landing short). Practice until you can send out your rig in a slightly looping path…
- Hold your finishing position until your rig lands and, as soon as it splashes down, turn the reel handle to close the bale-arm
How to Cast a Fly Fishing Rod
Probably hundreds of entire books have been published on fly casting. To prove it, below is my Amazon Associates link to search results on "fly casting" (which might earn us a bit of commission from some visitors!!):
Fly Casting on Amazon
With that in mind, here I will concentrate on my quick method for learning (and teaching) the “muscle memory” for doing an overhead cast. That cast is what most anglers want to get to the hang of.
The principles of having the casting weight on the opposite side of the rod to the target are also important when learning to cast a fishing rod in fly fishing…
It is just that you often need to cast the line backwards and forwards in order to extend the line.
Because of that, the target switches between being behind you (for the back-cast) and in front of you (for the forward cast).
The tricks to mastering overhead fly casting include smooth acceleration, timing and moving your hand/arm quite a lot less than you think you need to. It is not about power or hard, jerky “flicks”. Weirdly (considering this is going to be an overhead cast), I like to start out with a sideways movement. Here’s a cool game which teaches you the timing and how far to move your hands (and the rod-tip)
This is best done on some short grass turf (either in a garden or a park) and this helps to avoid damaging the line
- Lay out two targets on the ground roughly five or six metres (yards) apart (these can be hula hoops, the little rod “socks” that rods are supplied in, jumpers – anything that you can lay on the ground)
- Stand exactly in the middle of those targets so that your right shoulder is pointing directly towards one target, and your left shoulder is pointing towards the other.
- Then, without turning left or right, take two full steps directly backwards – so that you are facing the imaginary straight line drawn between the two targets, with your chest parallel to that imaginary line.
- With your casting line threaded through the rod, pull out four or five good “arm’s length’s” of line from your reel and, with the rod tip low, wiggle the tip to shake the slack line out onto the grass in front of you.
- Then, keeping the rod parallel to the ground, trap the line coming off the reel against the rod handle using your index finger. When the line is trapped, flick the loose line on the floor so that it is thrown behind you. Let it land on the ground.
- Then, again, keeping the rod parallel to the ground flick the line towards the target to your left…
- Now the game is to gently flick the line so that it lands across the middle of the right hand target. Then flick it back so that it lays across the middle of the left hand target. Let the line land on the grass each time.
- Every time, the fly line lands, it should be parallel to the imaginary line running straight through and joining both targets
- When you can get the line to do this consistently for BOTH targets, try the same game – only this time, don’t let the line land on the grass before flicking it back to the other target
- By keeping the rod parallel to the ground and smoothly swishing it left and right, you can keep the line in the air as long as you like. The difficult bit is keeping the line travelling over the centre of both targets.
If you sweep the rod too far in either direction, the line will be pulled off target – so this game gets you used to the correct forward and backward “stop the rod” positions for the amount of line you are casting
- Once you can keep the line off the ground and travelling over the targets, gradually raise the rod tip higher off the ground while continuing the swish the line backwards and forwards. Make sure that the line never cracks like a whip (you need to wait longer to allow the line to straighten before flicking the rod back in the opposite direction if it does)
- Eventually you will be able to raise the rod pretty much vertically and keep the line moving smoothly – when that happens you will have a good idea about the timing, power and “stop” positions that work
- Now re-adjust your feet so that your left foot is slightly in front of your right foot and adjust the direction of the back and forth movement of the rod so that it is going straight forwards and straight backwards (instead of from side to side in front of you). It helps if you angle the back-cast slightly upwards as well as backwards
- The last step to turn this into a really functional fly fishing cast is to pull some more line off the reel and allow a little bit of that line to slip between the fingers of your left hand just at the point where the line is rolling out in front of you.
- If you release too early, the rod won’t pull the line forwards (because there is no tension to pull against) – this will make your cast collapse.
- Release too late and no extra line will be pulled out – because the line has already used up all the energy by straightening completely.
- Now the game is to gently flick the line so that it lands across the middle of the right hand target. Then flick it back so that it lays across the middle of the left hand target. Let the line land on the grass each time.
- Get it just right and the line will extend in length in front of you as it gracefully unrolls off the end of your rod.
As mentioned already, this is just the tip of the iceberg – and there are many more casting skills to learn with a fly rod. However, this exercise is one of the fastest ways I know to help you develop the feeling of when the cast is working correctly. It's a good way to set yourself up for success.
How to Teach a Child to Cast a Fishing Rod
Using the same basic instructions as above for each of the three different styles of rod and reel, it is often possible to teach kids how to cast a fishing rod with a small adjustment.
- First of all, if you model each step of the casting exercise before asking your pupil to copy – then it is easy to turn everything into a fun game. Secondly, using a “perfect” correction to help seems much more effective than just saying “nope, that’s not right”. This is a method popularised by the Gracie Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Academy for teaching kids.
- The perfect correction is where you hold your hands over the top of your pupil’s hands and do the movement with them. When they go along with the movement and perform the grips in the right way you just reinforce that by saying “Perfect!”.
- Repetition of this each time your pupil follows along correctly (either with or without your hands guiding them) continues to reinforce the correct muscle memory. It also, importantly, helps to avoid kids from being too shy of trying in case they get it wrong and are criticised.
So, hopefully, it is easy to turn each of the three casting exercises we’ve already covered into a fun game for kids too. If you do then your young pupil(s) might well ask you the answer to the next challenge…
How to Cast a Fishing Rod Far
Everyone wants distance – we all know that the fish live on the far bank!
As long as we understand that distance isn’t the be-all and end-all of fishing (and usually, accuracy is far more important) then it can help you progress in your fishing to gradually increase the distance of your casts.
While there is no single, magic bullet, that will increase your distance across all the different fishing styles – there are a few common principles that can help:
- Don’t immediately start to put more power in. Over the long run that can limit your distance casting by just using brute force to cover up technique faults.
- As for the basic exercises, make sure your reel is filled with the right amount of line and - as long as it is strong enough to stand up to the forces of casting – consider using a thinner line if possible (this applies to fly casting just as much as any other rod and reel style)
- The best distances always come from correctly loading the rod and the most efficient transfer of your strength through the rod into the casting weight
- Transferring your body-weight through the cast by "rocking" from back-foot to front foot -or even stepping your back-foot through - becomes very important when seeking maximum distance
- As in the basic casting instructions, that makes it absolutely vital to properly match the strength and stiffness of your fishing rod to the weight you are casting
- Once you have those elements in place, it is time to read up on (or, ideally get one-to-one coaching) and practice, practice, practice using the best “form” and technique possible
- Only when you have that perfect form “dialled in” is it worth gradually increasing the force you put into your cast
If you really want to learn how to cast a fishing rod far, far over the horizon then you must measure your efforts.
What gets measured, gets improved…
Plus there’s no kidding a tape measure or surveyors wheel! Don’t rely on gauging distance based on how much line flies out…there’s a BIG difference between how much line leaves your reel – and how far your rig actually flies.
In the same way that you can’t build muscles by reading about press-ups – you need to actually do the practice for both form and force in order to increase your cast distances.
OK - let's continue this discussion in the comments...
Paul
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