******Q ******”Here’s my dilemma,” Steve Lampe says. ”Why is it that I can cast well when practicing on dry land, but when I get in waist-deep water my casting distance seems to be shorter?”
And Roger Mulrooney asks, ”Lately I have been doing a lot of fly-fishing from my kayak, and casting from this position feels awkward. Would a longer rod let me cast better and farther?”
Anytime you get into waist-deep water or sit in a boat or a canoe, body movement is restricted and so are your casting motions.
However, a long rod is not the cure. The line goes in the direction the rod tip stops. In deep water or when sitting, it is instinctive to use more force during the speed-up-and-stop, which causes the tip to dip down and back on the backcast. That creates a sag in the backcast that must be removed with part of the forward-casting stroke before you can move the line and fly to the target.
It is not the length of the rod that determines the direction the line travels and whether it sags. A 9-foot rod would cast as well as a 10-footer in this situation. The important thing to realize is that the rod tip must be traveling upward during the speed-up-and-stop on the backcast. The main reason people use longer rods when sitting or wading is that they can keep the sag in the backcast higher but stopping the rod in an upward motion will solve the problem.
