A few months back the guys at Fly Fisherman Magazine asked me if I would be interested in doing a video on a nymphing tactic I thought was useful, unique, and somewhat unique to my style of fishing. I of course said yes, and pretty quickly thought of the pitch cast as my tactic of choice.
The pitch cast (at least I call it the pitch cast) is the euro nymphing substitute for the roll cast. It’s very similar to flipping a jig on a bass rod- using the flies weight to fling it from under the rod tip. It’s used to cast your fly in tricky situations and places where you have no room to set up a back cast.
I use the pitch cast a lot. In a given year it probably makes up 20-30% of the casts I make, and is especially useful on my brushy home water in Pennsylvania. Despite that, it’s something I don’t see other anglers do often, and almost never see written about.
The cast is much more nuanced than we had time to dive into in the video and accompanying article, so I will likely do some of my own videos on it soon. In the meantime, hopefully this video is enough to get you started!
I hope you enjoy watching,
Mike Komara
