Start Slow For Fly-Fishing Success

Start slow for fly-fishing success

Susan Cocking - The Miami Herald
Published: Thu, Dec. 18, 2008 12:30AM
Modified Thu, Dec. 18, 2008 07:17AM

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. - His methods might be a little unorthodox, but his students love it. Jack Montague, founder of Wolfglen Fly Fishing School in Punta Gorda, is a full-service instructor. He supplies the rods and reels and demonstrates casting, then turns students loose on a small pond on his property to practice on fish.

Montague finds customers for Wolfglen by offering daylong fly-casting classes, fly-tying instruction, rod-building clinics and even wood-carving lessons. He can empty a reel in a single cast and make an accurate throw lying down. But that mostly is for show; he impresses upon his students to learn to walk before they run.

"When you are learning to cast, or practicing, don't keep trying to see how far you can throw the fly," Montague told five students during a recent Wolfglen session. "That's like teaching a person to drive by giving them a few quick lessons and then saying, 'OK, now let's see how fast you can make the car go!' "


The basics
Before going for distance, Montague gets down to basics: stance (stand square with the target) and grip (make a "V" between the thumb and forefinger on top of the rod grip so that it is an extension of your forearm).

"You can make a cast in any direction you want without shifting your weight," he said, adding that sudden weight shifts on a small boat send out a pressure wave that spooks game fish, such as snook and bonefish.

After circulating among the group and checking each person's grip and stance, Montague presented what he calls the "five basic axioms" of fly casting:

* The fly will not move until all the slack is out of the line.
* Wherever the rod tip goes when power is stored in the bend of the rod, the fly will surely follow.
* When line is cast, it goes out in an unrolling loop, and when it stops unrolling, the fly will hit the water.
* The efficiency of the cast depends on the size of the loop, and the size of the loop depends on where the rod tip stops.
* If you are getting tired when casting, then you are doing something wrong.

Montague directed each student to practice casting with 30 to 35 feet of fly line extending from the rod. First came the backcast -- making the rod move from the 10 o'clock position to 1 o'clock; then the "drift" -- allowing the rod tip to travel slightly backward to enable a full draw for the forward cast; next, the forward cast -- snapping the wrist forward when the forearm is at a 45-degree angle; then putting backcast and forward cast together; and, finally, shooting some line by releasing it through the fingers while lowering the rod tip.

The students practiced with varying degrees of success. Then Montague went inside to his fly-tying bench and quickly made some small tan-colored patterns out of deer hair that resemble the fish-feed pellets he tosses in the pond. Each student got one and began casting into the pond.

Success
"Woo! I've got one!" Sheryl May said, stripping in a feisty tilapia, one of several she caught.
Howard Hecht, a retired police officer from Palm Harbor, also caught several tilapia.
Hecht said he has taken several classes with Montague but likes to come back for refreshers.
"He's already contradicted 90 percent of what you hear at these fly-fishing clubs," Hecht said. "Nobody teaches it as well as him."