The Tuck Cast

The tuck cast, or tuck mend is a great cast for getting heavily weighted nymphs or even streamers quickly down into the water column.

If you’re fishing with weight the last thing you want is a tight line on the delivery - The tight line causes drag immediately and reduces the ability for the nymph to sink. If you could get the nymph to drop from the sky with plenty of slack behind it it’s going to sink much faster and drift far more naturally. And that’s exactly what the tuck cast does for us.

This is a fairly easy one to execute.  This is where you want to over-power the cast and by that I mean just put in more power and effort than you normally would. After making a fairly low back cast and a high forward cast – stop the cast high, early and aggressively, and even a little earlier than you normally would. This will make the leader turn over really aggressively and whip round and tuck back under the cast.

Now drop the rod tip down and follow the nymph to the water. If you’ve done this right you should see a nice amount of slack fall down behind the nymph and onto the water.

Tip:  A short leader will really help that whole tuck motion – and of course the more weight you have on your fly the better this whole thing will work

This tutorial, along with 9 other casts, the five essentials of fly casting and additional explanations are all included on our acclaimed 50 minute fly casting DVD Casts that Catch Fish available here