Fishing your Back-cast and Casting Backhanded.

Fishing your back-cast is something I first read about in the Ultimate Book of Fly Fishing, although at the time I was still focused on learning the basics and didn't give it too much thought.  More recently, I read about fishing your back-cast in Rich Osthoff's "No Hatch to Match."  In both cases, it was a quick sentence or two about dealing with casting when there is a lot of foliage behind you.  Instead of facing the water, turn around and face the foliage.  That way you can more accurately direct your forward-cast between the breaks in the trees and instead fish your back-cast.  I'll be honest, I haven't actually had much cause to use this trick yet, but hey, sounds good to me.

How I got around to fishing my back-cast had nothing to do with foliage.  I was wading in the upper West Branch with the water flowing from my right to my left.  I casted my dry fly upstream and let it drift down across my body and to my left.  Since I was in a long run with a fairly steady current throughout, I was getting a very long drift.  The issue I had was that in order to get my fly back upstream, I had to pick up my fly and false cast while facing downstream and slowly turn upstream to cast again.  Not a huge deal, but it seemed very inefficient to me and all that false casting is sure to spook a lot of trout.

Instead of turning 135 degrees (to cast at a 45 degree angle upstream from a fly nearly straight behind me) it occurred to me a few nights later that it would be fairly easy to instead fish my back-cast.  Face downstream on the pickup, throw in a false cast or two to get the angle right, and fish the back-cast instead.  I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but I haven't come across it yet in my reading so I figured I'd jot it down as info I found useful as I learn how to fly fish.

Here's another thing I found interesting while practicing fishing my back-cast in the yard just last week.  With a slight adjustment of the angle of your feet, fishing your back-cast is absolutely no different than casting backhanded.  It's just a simple change of perception, but for me it made a huge difference.  I had no problem whatsoever fishing my back-cast.  It was only a matter of adjusting the stop points on my back-cast and forward-cast to get the presentation right.  Any time I tried to cast backhanded, it was a hot mess.  Let's just say it's a good thing I follow the rules and always wear glasses and a hat while fly casting.

Instead of facing forward and trying to cast backhanded, try facing to the side or even slightly away from the stream and pretend you're fishing your back-cast.  Same result.  The line is on the opposite side of your body and the presentation is much easier to control.  As you get used to that, you can gradually rotate your body position until you're facing fully forward and truly casting backhanded.  I'm still working on it myself, and perhaps a certified casting instructor would call me to task for such a thing, but so far, this different way of looking at things has helped me immensely.