This is a desperation tactic and only serves to booger up the fish. They see the line and leader land, and the fly is coming at them. The angle it’s moving at doesn’t matter.” I had trouble believing this based on my experiences in Florida, but of course he was exactly right.Īs the fish gets past you you’re casting from behind it. When I fished in Louisiana with Danny Ayo he told me, “As long as you get the fly within six inches of the fish’s head he’ll hit it. However, where the fish aren’t pressured that doesn’t seem to matter. If your cast is too long it’s best to wait for the fish to pass and then try again. Redfish are not used to being attacked by their prey, and unless you’ve watched it happen you’d be astonished at just how spooked a group of reds can be by a two inch long fly. In most areas it’s a mistake to cast past the fish and bring the fly to it. A cruising redfish can move fairly quickly, so at a 90 degree angle your fly might be in front of the fish only a second or two. This is by far your best chance.Īs you get closer to being at a right angle to the path of the fish the sweetness of the angle declines, since the fly of necessity is in the strike zone for a shorter amount of time. You can adjust the speed of your retrieve to keep the fly a foot in front of him, or, if it’s a school, in front of a lot of them. The place from which you can keep the fly in the strike zone for the longest amount of time is directly in the path of the fish, with him coming right at you. The longer you can keep the fly in the strike zone, the more likely you are to get a bite. Or you might be somewhere in between one of these three locations. You might be off to the side of the path of the fish, with your cast at a right angle to his line of movement. You could be behind the fish, with him swimming directly away from you. You could be positioned in front of the fish, with him swimming directly at you. Hopefully it’s obvious that the longer the fly is in that strike zone, the more likely the fish is to take it. Our assumption here is that in order to get a bite, the fly must be in the strike zone. Over the years I’ve seen a few fish do about faces to take a fly. Understand that the strike zone changes in size constantly though, going from non-existent to huge and back again, and occasionally even goes behind the fish. Since their mouths point down, redfish prefer to feed down, but they show little hesitation in coming up for a fly unless they are heavily fished or have been disturbed by boat traffic. This area is roughly shaped like a half a football, extending with the wide part at the mouth of the fish to the apex out in front of it. The strike zone is an area around the fish where, if the fly is properly presented, you have a reasonable chance that the fish will take it. We’re going to revisit this concept and then relate it to presenting the fly to redfish- cruising fish, laid-up fish, and tailers. In this video Billy explains the concept of strike zones as it relates to tarpon fishing. When I was younger and just getting into saltwater fly fishing, I was fortunate to get a copy of the finest instructional fishing video ever made, the late Billy Pate’s Fly Fishing for Tarpon (which I recommend highly). But it’s a great segue into this section’s premise- after locating the fish, how you present the fly to them is the single most important variable in getting one to bite, much more important than what’s at the end of your leader. The moral to this story? Your casting must be second nature in order to take advantage of opportunities, especially once in a lifetime opportunities like this one was. “Lead them, put it where they’re going and let them swim into it.” Rob tried again with the same result. When he got the fly in the water, not very far away, there was so much slack in the line that the cast was useless. “Cast out in front of them, and just make it look alive,” I told him. It was practically certain that the deed would now be done. He had caught exactly one redfish on fly in his life, and badly wanted another. It was a redfish fisher’s dream, a school of at least 500 fish, swimming fast, up on top, crashing bait all around us, one of the finest sights in all of angling, and one that one doesn’t see very often in the Mosquito Lagoon. This is an excerpt from the book, Redfish on the Fly, by Capt.
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