This post was last updated on January 11th, 2016 at 01:07 am
A Roll Cast To Remove your Fly from a Rock or Logjam
To Roll Cast your fly from a log or rock is a very simple tactic. Once mastered you will rarely ever have to go into your prime fishing spot to manually remove your fly. Often times you are casting to a feeding fish when you accidentally hook a tree or log. In order to remove your fly from the obstruction without scaring the trout, you can use this simple technique.
Step 1) Don’t set the hook in the tree by pulling hard: that is the worst thing you can do here. At first you should do some light shakes to see if the fly will easily dislodge. The key to this tactic is to try to make the weight of the fly fishing line pull the fly from a different direction than strait backwards (towards you). By shaking your rod in and up and down/left and right motion this will often make the fly pop right out of the object. Remember: the key to this strategy is to not bury the hook deep, don’t ever pull hard until all other options are exhausted.
Step 2) The roll cast: The roll cast is so effective for this strategy because it will put your heavy fly line and leader behind the fly and pull it right out. This uses either the weight of the line, or the extra pressure you can get from your line being submerged in the water on the back side of the log. Most of the time your line will never even have to touch the water on the back side of the fly. The weight of the cast with a tight roll cast loop will pop it right out and have you casting to your trophy brown trout once again without it ever knowing what happened.
If the fly fishing roll cast doesn’t work, use the current to your advantage.
Another great way to remove a fly from a log jam or river rock is to allow the current to create a large loop in your fly fishing line and leader. This will give you the ability to pull from a downstream angle assuming you are upstream from your fly. You will simply need to tug with your rod tip low to the water, this will keep your line downstream of your fly and just give it a few pulls. If it is possible to remove the fly, this tactic will usually work.
Summary:
There are times while your are fly fishing that neither of these strategies will work; such as when your line is rapped around a branch multiple times. But usually if you don’t panic and set the hook into the object you will be able to save a lot of precious flies from trees using this technique. Most importantly you will be able to get your fly out of a tree while there is a feeding trout in the immediate area of your “hung up” trout fly.