Kalyn Hoggard | Monday, 7 April 2025
When I first heard of Peter Hayes, I was going to be meeting with my mentor Bruce Richards in Ennis, MT for the annual fly festival there. We were excited to hang out, cast in the grass, and spend some time together at the festival. I was also taking the CI exam on the trip. Bruce had mentioned that Peter Hayes was going to be there, and I should plan to meet up with him and cast. This led to some web searching and excitement on my end. At the event Bruce was going to be doing casting demonstrations, and I was going to help him out with the casting competition that was goin to be held. I was planning to also cast with the Boss and hopefully get a chance to meet this mysterious Peter over the few days that I was around.
If you don’t know, which I didn’t at the time, Peter is a caster, instructor, competitor, fisher, and all around a great personality to be around. I wouldn’t call him an entertainer, because that cheapens it. Peter just has that contagious upbeat energy that demands your attention. As an instructor, it is quite inspiring… Peter is one of THE guys when it comes to fly fishing: multiple Australian national championships for casting, multiple medals at worlds for casting, also decorated as a fly-fishing competitor at worlds, well known for instruction across the globe, his son may be the youngest CCI ever, and the accolades go on. Peter if you are blushing at this point, cheers man. Now this isn’t just a fluff piece on how you should all bow down to his shrine, but it is relevant to the story.
So, I’m at the event, and Bruce is about to start demonstrating, I was a little late due to a fishing situation I couldn’t just leave, and Bruce introduces me to Peter. We went directly into mechanics, feel, style, competitive casting, and the like. He is nearly overwhelming for a freshly certified casting nerd. We started talking about accuracy casting. So, Peter grabbed a rod and demonstrated how he hover casts, and my jaw dropped. I had no idea you could stall the fly like that. I still can’t hover like him, but i’m practicing.
So, the show goes on, and we are all having a good time hanging out casting and being involved with the competition. The real casters (Bruce and Peter) are playing around and basically putting on an informal casting clinic. The section at the festival cordened off for people to try out new rods has been completely taken over by nerds. As you can imagine the reps at the event were eager to get rods into people’s hands, and the poor rep (we will call him Tom) from a popular rod company that I will keep anonymous (It rhymes with Smarty), mistakenly began to give Peter a casting lesson with their new rod. In all fairness, I tried to warn the kid, but it was too late… I still don’t feel bad for the guy.
At some point in this lesson, Peter is casting in ways that has completely blown Tom away. So, Peter tells him, “I’m working on this cast that few people in the world can do consistently. What I’m about to do is tie a knot in the fly line. Now people throw knots in the leader with tails all of the time, but to intentionally tie one in the fly line is much more difficult.” Peter does it on his first cast and there is this perfect over hand knot in the fly line, which he picks up and shows everyone. Then he says, “Now it takes some practice to tie a knot in the fly line on command, but the real difficult cast is to cast it out… Now you see, I casted the knot into the line right-handed. The only way you can cast it out is left-handed.” It just so happened that Tom, our brave casting lesson provider, is left-handed. Peter changes hands, and goes to make a cast, but stops. He looks over at Tom, and says “Well actually, aren’t you left-handed?” Tom says, “Yes I am.” Peter hands Tom the rod and says, “See if you can get the knot out of there.” He did actually try a couple of times before he put it together . What a setup right? I have a feeling there are many stories from others about Peter just like this one.
As soon as I got home, I was trying to throw knots on command. I was also trying to perfect a range of other types of casts that I had seen on my trip. And by Bruce, I started tying knots. It was going well enough that I took the time to get slow motion footage of how the knot and the loop form together. It is a really cool video, and it blew me away to discover what the line had to do for the overhand knot to form on the fly line. I think the slow-motion video is posted somewhere on the board, and if Paul would be so gracious, if it isn’t I’m pretty sure he has a copy.
https://www.sexyloops.co.uk/theboard/viewtopic.php?p=81539&hilit=Kalyn#p81539
Here’s a quick and dirty explanation on how I tie knots. You can just slam the rod tip into the loop as it goes by, but that’s not any fun. I want the rod to be in the vertical plane, and I want to be laying the loop over perpendicular to the rod tip. When I go to deliver the knot, I add a little bit of a tracking error so the sideways loop will travel at the rod tip. If the loop hits the rod tip right around the time the loop is being formed, then a circle forms in line from the crash. The loop forms behind the circle and goes through it, overhand knot. So why would we ever want to do this? Well, we wouldn’t, but it is a fun problem to solve that develops loop control and pushes your understanding of fly casting.
I could go on about my experiences meeting the man carrying a journal and a smile. I really don’t think he was even trying to be inspiring, but he certainly inspired me to get better at casting, and reminded me of the importance of play. So, if you are one of those casting nerds as many of us are, then you should go out of your way to have a cast with Mr. Hayes. It’ll be a good time.