Saltwater Tip: Dealing With Wind

Producer: Red's Fly Shop

“I’m out here fishing some baby tarpon and I want to share with you a really important tip that applies to any time you’re in a flats boat.

You can probably hear on the mic we are constantly battling wind and that’s going to be one of the one of the problems that you’re always going to deal with.  So what I want to teach you is a back cast: learning a proper back cast, when to do it and why, and encourage you guys to get good at it.

So any time you’re in the flats boat first thing you want to ask your guide is How do the hands the clock work as far as directions go? So we’ve got twelve o’clock, eleven o’clock, ten o’clock, nine o’clock–and that will generally be oriented on the boat not your personal position….

The other thing that you’re going to encounter is  a lot of wind that is blowing very stiff from a right to left. If I go to make a cast, if I’ve got a wind that’s really strong from the right to a left and I’m aiming at one or two o’clock, I’m gonna have to turn around and physically aim this direction and then let my back cast sail like that right there…. I’ve caught numerous fish this week specifically because I’m very quick with a back cast and that tends to be very true when fishing tarpon, especially schools of tarpon, where I think yesterday I hooked one, it jumped and came off the school moved around this side of the boat and I ended up taking and throwing just a little flip just about thirty feet like that right there and hook the fish just like that by being very quick and understanding the back cast…. It’s not all about how far you can cast, it’s about being a good fisherman in general and having all those tools.”