Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 28 June 2025
I was talking to the man behind \\\\\/ when I was in Piteå about a lot of fly casting stuff. One of them was the roll cast. Lately I have been getting more and more into the roll cast and I think that is a cast that deserves more credit and attention. Sometimes seen as a beginners cast. It can be, it can help someone get going quite fast. Heavy line and a soft rod and things can get going quite fast to a fishable cast. But the same time I think that the roll cast can be the cast that really shows the casters skills. A long roll cast with a stiff rod, light line and tight vertical loop, that is a hard cast. Or roll casting into a head wind, not an easy cast.
There certainly exists rods and lines that makes roll casting easier. A line with a Spey taper certainly helps. If the line is heavy enough to help with a straight rod tip path, it also makes the cast easier. But the roll cast is like every other cast, we can adjust the rod tip path to make every combination work. That’s a skill that you probably want to have and learning that will improve all of your other casting.
A couple of months back I realised that my roll cast was kind of bad. Sometimes it was good, like the roll cast pick up that just worked every time. But that was just something I was doing without thinking about it. Strip the line in, but save some line to get the next cast going quicker, sweep the line in to fish it all the way in, roll cast to get going. All the other times I was cheating with the jump roll. I say cheating since I find the jump roll to be an easier cast when you have the anchoring down. You get more line in the D-loop and there is more energy in the system. So I needed to improve my roll cast.
I started by taking a few steps back. Heavier line and softer rod. I used the MED7, on paper not the ideal line for roll casting but works really well. Paired with my 5wt rod. I used that combination to learn how to cast a nice tight loop with just a small tap at the end of the stroke. That took a bit of experimentation to get it going really well. You have to play around to find your target for delivery, how to move the rod to get the energy into the line. Other things to play around with here is how you can move the rod after you formed the loop to assist the loop. I found that how I moved the rod tip after I formed the loop had an impact on how the loop behaved. Walking back and forth to put a lot of line in the D-loop is an interesting exercise for the roll cast. That really shows how much difference a bit extra line in the D-loop makes.
That setup wasn’t just slam away and get a decent roll cast but it helped me find things that helped me when I moved back to other combinations of lines and rods. I think you should play around with underlining your rod for roll cast practice. Then you really have to pay attention to the things you learnt about the roll cast. A combination I often pick up when I go out for practice is a MED5 and my 7wt rod. That is a combination that roll casts really good. I have tried to roll cast my competition rod with the MED5 and that works well, but I should probably play around with that more for the roll cast.
During practice try to really get the vertical loop roll cast going. I find that a more horizontal loop plane can make it much easier to set a tight loop, but the real skill is in the vertical loop.
Oh and I almost forgot the thing at the beginning \\\/, that’s really good advice for the roll cast. Maybe even better like this:
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Translation into position, and just tap the line away.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: The guy that Paul has told me was first with \\\/