The amount of times I have fished through a pool and thought that I must be doing something wrong or that my timing has gone off are many. I carry on down - still not first rate - strange as the wind, although upstream, is only very light and I can normally cover that lie on the far side quite happily - oh well.
Suddenly I have a thought and look at my fly..............ah. That'll be the problem then. One of the hooks has caught itself up around the leader. I then wonder how long it has been that way. Potentially I haven't fished the pool at all!
Maybe it is just me, but I get so engrossed in casting my way out of trouble or into form or trying to fish every cast as though it's my last, that I forget the obvious.
Here is a quick sequence to show the effects of a hooked up fly. In this case it is a big tube that I wouldn't normally fish in these conditions as the water is a bit low, but it does show how the entire cast is affected from the initial lift, through the touchdown and lift off of the anchor and finally the turnover of the fly itself.
Although this is a set-up to make the effects obvious, even with small flies all these difficulties are experienced if they are hooked up, just to a lesser extent. The fact is that with, say, a size 12 double or treble, it is even easier to waste a lot of time casting when all the while not fishing.
When in doubt, I MUST stop fishing and check my flies.
The silly thing is that at night I check my flies every few casts and rarely have a problem.
