Swing the Fly Issue 2.3 Winter 2014-15 | Page 92

Double Haul

If you are fishing with a long belly line, or better still a double taper, there are a number of times you may have to, or want to, make a turbo cast when you still have a lot of line in the water in front of you. This is where the double haul turbo casts come in.

With a regular trout rod of 9 ft or so, there really isn’t the length in the rod to pick up long lengths of line on the water. Not only this, but if you have, say, seventy feet of line out in front of you and you try to make the D-loop stroke of a switch cast, you will find that you have too much line lying on the water to be able to break the surface tension. You just cannot get that much line out of the water with any degree of control.

However, by adding a haul to your D-loop stroke you can utilize the extra load and power that the haul puts into your rod to break the surface tension. A smooth, long haul is more effective in getting a long line out of the water on the D-loop stroke than a short stabby haul is – so remember that.

There is no doubt you have to be a better caster to be able to do this. First of all you are handling much longer line lengths, secondly, you are casting double taper lines (or at least long belly lines), but most of all it is because the D-loop has to have tremendous speed. A haul is useless if there is not enough speed in the rearward traveling line to pull out the slack line you are going to feed between the hauls. It isn’t too hard with an overhead cast, but with a D-loop that is anchored to the water it is a different story. You must have enough speed in your D-loop so that when you have completed your D-loop stroke haul there is plenty of momentum in the D-loop to draw out the slack as you bring your line hand back to your rod hand in preparation for the forward haul.