Top 10 Dry Fly Mistakes

When you see as many casts and hookups as fishing guides do over the years, you begin to learn what works and what doesn’t. Whether a cast has any chance of succeeding or not. And I’m not talking about fly selection, I’m talking about presentations from the angler. And we want to limit the number of casts that have no chance, and increase the number of casts that have some chance. There’s this progressive meter in my head that goes from bright red to bright green indicating zero chance of eliciting a strike to "oh boy he’s coming for you!” You don’t need to be Brad Pitt shadow casting while balancing on a large boulder in the middle of a rushing river to be successful, but there are a few items which can really limit success if not corrected while fishing from a drift boat, which is what we do here on the Upper Madison.

Before we talk about what those problems are and the solutions to each, it’s important to first set the context. My approach and philosophy is dry fly first. If there’s a bug to imitate on the surface, that’s what I’m going to do with you. And generally speaking, that’s most of the season as we have hatches occurring reliably from February to October (see my Upper Madison hatch chart HERE). That’s what I prefer to specialize in, for a variety of reasons. Casting a dry fly is aesthetically pleasing and fun to do. Most anglers have some improvement to make when it comes to this, and I enjoy teaching the cast and watching anglers improve and be successful. But dry fly fishing also is a technique that is founded upon getting a reaction out of a fish rather than passively opening up their mouths to eat drifting nymphs. You’re actively attempting to cause a fish to react and chase. And while streamer fishing also offers this, in dry fly fishing the visual cues are off the charts and that’s what puts it over the top for me when it comes to technique selection. Who doesn’t like seeing a trout porpoise and suck down your offering? 

I say all that because my “Top 10 Mistakes” are going to be different from a guide who specializes in streamer fishing or nymph fishing. This “Top 10” is also specific to drift boat fishing, which is what we do 99% of the time. So for those of you who fish with me, or enjoy dry fly fishing with others from a drift boat, this list will help you improve. And you may not be surprised to see that most of them have to do with casting motions. So let’s get started.

(1) Backcasting Too Far

Many anglers, even the most skilled, are susceptible to this problem. That’s not to say they can’t still present the fly in all other respects, perfectly, and still catch fish. But this one thing can make their lives so much easier when it comes to casting and presenting a dry fly. The simple fact is too many people travel their backcast too far back. Because of this, the fly travels an exaggerated and sagging pathway backwards and forwards making the entire cast inefficient. Not ineffective necessarily, but inefficient. And efficiency can make a big difference in success. It still may land where they want because they’ve learned to compensate, but if it’s fixed, the casting motion becomes almost effortless and infinitely more accurate and enjoyable. 

In a drift boat, you’re elevated above the water and the target you’re trying to get the fly to land on. If you’re standing, you’re even more elevated. Because of this, the most efficient pathway for your fly to travel is at a nearly 20 degree angle downward, depending on the distance of the cast. Thus, your backcast needs to travel up and behind you not straight back behind you. And this means your backcast needs to stop sooner than you’re likely going. 

On calm days, this isn’t too much of a problem, but here in the Madison Valley, we don’t have too many calm days. It’s most important in a north wind on the southbound Upper Madison. This wind direction magnifies bad backcasts to the maximum. But it also allows for an easy teachable moment on the importance of a good backcast because despite even a strong north breeze in your face, stopping your backcast sooner and sooner will eventually get you to a point where your fly zips to your target without a problem. This is always a lightbulb moment for most anglers. It really demonstrates how little wind has anything to do with your cast, if your cast is done proper. 

(2) Casting Too Far

This is an easy one. For those dry fly first guides out there, it may be the one problem that’s the most difficult to overcome. The urge for anglers to cast 30, 40, 50 (!) feet is sometimes so strong that the only way to stop it is to shove the boat so close to the bank they can’t do it. But why is this a problem? Fly line manufacturers give you 80 feet, why not use it!? Good question. If they made a 30 ft fly line they’d have a lot of interest from fishing guides. 

This problem is a killer. People love casting. I certainly do. And they love casting more and more line because it’s fun. But on a complex riffled river like the Upper Madison, too much of a good thing limits success. There are several reasons why. First, the reason you’re in a drift boat is to get you closer to more fish. You simply don’t need to do it to reach a fish. I think people assume that there’s no fish close to the boat. And sure, if I smack one with the oar or float directly over it, yeah it probably scoots away. But fish that are closer aren’t necessarily spooked from the boat. And they’re a lot easier to reach. Accuracy in that 20-30 feet range is far superior for most anglers than accuracy at 40-50 feet as well. Especially considering our wind issues out here. And to get that fly 40-50 feet from you, some backcasting is usually needed. And backcasting in a quickly moving drift boat means missed targets. But let’s say you’re successful at quickly landing that fly 40 feet away, your drift will last shorter than if it were close and you’re back at casting again, missing more targets. But let’s say again you overcome that challenge and raise a fish, you now have 20 more feet than you need to pick up and connect to that fish. And as you may know, fish are quick to spit flies. Yet another challenge. So why give yourself all these challenges? 

In my boat, my brain is always working to position anglers 20-30 feet total from their position to the spot on the water where I want the fly to land. That includes the amount of rod extended from the boat, fly line, leader, and tippet. So let’s do some math. Most rod tips when casting are 6 feet or so from the bow of the boat. I like 9 ft leaders with a couple feet of tippet to a single dry. That’s 17 feet right there. All we need from the reel is a rod length of line to get us to our target. Nine to ten feet of fly line. That’s it. That’s all you need. Actually, that’s all you want. Every foot over that presents more challenges in line management. With the right rod elevation you may only have 4 feet of fly line floating on the water. This gives you maximum control over your drift and minimal mending, if any! Efficiency. Better casts. Easier casts. Better accuracy. Better drifts. Longer drifts. More fishing. Less casting. Quicker connection to fish. More fish in net. It’s all better. 

It’s also important for anglers to remember that we’re fishing as a team. It's your job to cast the fly, and my job to position you. And if there’s one thing I take pride in, it’s working my ass off to be precise with the boat for every single cast. If I’m positioning you constantly 20-30 feet from the target to your rod tip and you’re constantly casting at different lengths, we’re leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. You’re not where I want you to be, and my ability to put you where you need to be is what you’re paying me for. Nothing is more satisfying than a completely synchronized boat. When I start seeing targets and flies hitting those targets without having to call them out every time, it’s a beautiful thing. Poetry. It allows me to analyze fly selection quicker as well. How am I supposed to know if a fly is working if it’s not where I want it to be? Because of this, sorting out the daily puzzle of how to catch a fish gets solved quicker leading to quicker results. 

(3) False Casting Too Much

Now that we’ve fixed our backcast and shortened our casting length, we can now spend more time with the fly hunting on the water. False casting becomes less important now. As long as the fly line is clean, our leader length and diameter are dialed, and the fly is dressed, most times it will float just fine with a single back cast. By that I mean when you need to re-cast, it’s 90% of the time only necessary to pick up and lay down. If we’re fishing smaller Baetis, we may need to false cast once or twice to dry things off. But, for the most part, picking up and laying down is the way to go. Another situation when we may need to false cast a few times is when we need to buy ourselves some time for target acquisition. If we’re passing a boulder our next target is the slick downstream of the rock, not the toilet bowl water immediately behind the rock. This is where people fall victim to what I call “shiny object syndrome.” Fish always hang out right behind rocks, right? Maybe. But I know there’s more fish downstream of the rock just a little ways, in water that will allow our flies to float naturally. This is where the current gathers up slightly and the surface is calm. That’s where we want to be. And on some big rocks with major hydraulics, that target may be 20-30 feet downstream. Other smaller rocks maybe a couple feet downstream. So on the big rocks, we’ve got to be patient and stay focused on the target. And sometimes that means false casting while we’re floating by the rock a few times until the target is in range, then we lay it down. Let the boat do the work for you.

But generally speaking, the more false casting you do, the less water you’re covering. On a river as fast as the Upper Madison, for every fully completed backcast we’re passing 5 feet of water give or take. This multiplies. And it’s not uncommon at first (before I’ve had a chance to nip it in the bud), to see casts that are so long they require multiple backcasts such that the fly is actively drifting effectively for less time than it was in the air. No bueno.

(4) Casting Too Late

I’ve mentioned a few times about the speed of the Upper Madison. The 50 mile riffle waits for no one. And because of the predominant south wind we have here at our backs, a calm speed of 3 miles an hour can quickly become 4 to 4.5 miles an hour. Because of the speed, targets approach quickly and being too slow to anticipate them can lead to your fly hitting the target too late and all of a sudden the boat is on top of your fly, or landing too late at the right distance and missing the target altogether. There’s an art to keeping one eye on the target and one on the next, allowing you to do some quick calculations in your head about how long to leave a fly before casting to next. This comes with repetition and practice. But in the meantime, you may hear me say “again,” which means move on to the next target. And because we’re on the same page with distance and direction, I don’t need to call out either and can simply say “again.” Simplifying commands helps you simplify your calculations. Less to sort out in the brain.

(5) Target Acquisition

I’ve also mentioned target acquisition a few times. Even in ideal situations with a completely synchronized boat between angler and rower, targets are often very small or narrow. Tiny slicks in the middle. Small areas of smooth water surrounded by rougher water. With a shortened cast, most anglers, even beginners, can be pretty accurate. But that accuracy doesn’t matter if the angler doesn't see the spot. On a river like the Upper Madison, with so much riffle water, it acts like a treadmill to fish. The slightest difference in current speed can attract more fish. And that slight difference is communicated to us by what the water looks like on the surface. Everything we need to know is told by the surface. And many times, I’m looking for tiny little glassy slicks where the water appears smoother than the surrounding water. This tells me the water underneath is slower. Slower treadmills are easier to stay on than faster treadmills and so fish are attracted to these spots. Some are incredibly obvious. But many are not. I often spend some time at the beginning of the day pointing out obvious targets and more subtle targets. Sometimes the difference in success and failure is a foot or less this way or that. 

(6) Casting Direction

We anglers are easily sucked into the past. One more shot at that spot or that fish and the next thing you know we’re casting back upstream. Stay focused! Forward! When dry fly fishing from a boat, it’s imperative that both anglers cast forward. If the center of the boat (me) is the center of a clock, both anglers should generally try to stick to 1 to 2 o'clock on the right side and 10 to 11 o'clock on the left side. There are some exceptions to this of course, but that’s the general strategy. This means, for the angler in the stern, casting over my oar blades which can be awkward at first for the angler. But that’s where you should be. I’ll work around you. The primary reason for these directions is related to drag. If our line and fly are falling with the current as opposed to against the current, our flies will drift longer and more naturally with the added benefit of allowing the fish to see the fly before the boat. When combined with a reach cast, drift efficiency is maximized and mending is completely unnecessary. This is my preferred method, and the cast itself is fairly easy. It simply involves stopping the rod on the forward stroke slightly higher with a crisp stop allowing you to lay the line down to the upstream side so that your fly line is nearly parallel to the current. No mending necessary afterwards and a nice long beautiful drift. And it’s important that BOTH anglers stay in the same direction to prevent lines crossing on backcasts from the front angler. 

(7) Rod Elevation

This problem is easily fixed but sometimes goes unnoticed by the angler. You’ve done all the right things on a cast and accurately hit the target, but the drift is getting swept away a few seconds earlier than we want. Simply lifting the rod tip another foot or two and taking a little line off the water will remove a few extra currents from the equation, leading to more efficient line management during the drift. Less current to suck the fly under. Generally, I like rod tips parallel to the water or slightly higher.

(8) Landing The Fly Too Hard

This one is related to your rod elevation. On the forward stroke, I see anglers many times casting too aggressively (compensating for a backcast traveling too far) and the rod tip nearly splashes the water on the way forward leading the fly to splash itself resulting in a shorter drift because the fly got so waterlogged on the landing. Stopping the rod parallel to the water, or close to it, will allow the fly line to unfold in a nice loop and the fly to lay down softly and ride the riffle longer.

Now, for those of you who come to fish with me for Salmonflies, you can ignore everything I just said. That big size 4 dry fly needs to touch grass blades and hit the water with some splash! 

(9) Setting Too Quick

There’s some real quick draws out there! Especially you athletic types. You’ve done everything right. Cast was short and sweet, fly presented perfectly, and here that rainbow comes. Most times, fish don’t dart up and grab a fly super quickly. Because our river is so shallow and clear, we see the fish coming often. And that puts those quick draw anglers at a major disadvantage. The bigger fish especially come to dries slower and eat them slower generally. Once you see the fish break the surface, it still hasn’t eaten it fully. This is when most people set and yank the fly too early before it’s in the mouth. The urge to yank quickly is strong in some anglers. Patience, young grasshopper. Let the fish eat the fly, then and only then, set the hook! That leads us to the last major mistake in dry fly fishing from the boat…

(10) Setting Too Aggressively 

The average trout on the Upper Madison is somewhere in the 12-14” range I’d say, depending on time of year. Late August is a time when all the young of year trout are feeding actively and very aggressively. So you can see a disproportionate number of smaller fish eating dries in late summer. Either way, these aren’t marlin. And we’re not using marlin gear. To set the hook properly on a trout using dry flies is to do so slowly and purposefully. No more, no less. In fact, if you set the hook with the same motion and power as a pick up and lay down cast, that’s about right. Often I’m using 4X tippet for smaller dries (again, exceptions for Salmonflies and other Stoneflies and Hoppers), and these size tippets can’t take the shock of a marlin hook set. So be gentle but purposeful. If you’re trout leaves the water when you set the hook, that’s your indicator that you’ve gone too far! Avoid level 11 hook sets.