One reason Tennessee's Craig Powers is such a good fisherman is that he can catch fish no one else can. And that's because he can make casts no one else can.
He can flick baits with two sets of treble hooks though a cup-sized hole in vegetation. He can silently drop a bait waaaaaaay back into a crack in rocks that no one else would ever think of fishing. And when you see it, you wish you could cast like that because you realize it's possible.
What Powers knows about casting would fill a book or two, but here we just asked him for a few tips on how you can start improving your casting accuracy.
1. Get a Different Set-Up
"The first thing you need to do is buy a shorter rod," he said, "a 5 1/2- to 6- foot rod with a pistol grip or short handle. That's everything. To make that underhand roll cast you need to have a short handle because otherwise the handle hits your wrist.
"You also need to go down in rod action. If you're used to using medium-heavy, use medium or medium-light because you need a rod with a lot of tip."
You also need to adjust your reel so it's "on the borderline of having a backlash on every cast," Powers said. "It needs to be set really loose. That's what lets your bait stay a foot off the water so you can make your underhand cast."
Finally, you should "go down in line size. If you use 20, go to 17. If you're at 17, go to 14. But never go below 14," he said, "because when you're making those short underhand casts, you're not in open water. You're throwing under boat docks or brush, and when you do get a fish on in there, you need a little bit of line size to get it out."
2. Practice, But Don't Use Buckets
No matter how skilled an angler you are, or how skilled you think you are, "the main thing with that cast is to get out in the back yard and practice," Powers said. "But don't use buckets.
"When you're making that underhand cast, you want to make it right on top of the water, like a skip cast only you're not skipping it. Get a coffee can and turn it on its side. If you need to cast into buckets, turn them sideways.
"Stand up on something, like you're on the front deck of a boat," he added. "I see a lot of people stand on the ground when they practice and it's a totally different scenario. A case in point would be those guys that shoot archery tournaments. They can hit a quarter out to 40 yards, but put them in a deer stand and they can't hit a deer 10 yards away."
3. Bent Hooks
When you think you have your lawn casting down, practice it out on the lake. "You have to get out there and work at it," Powers said. "When you have 15 minutes to spare, get out there and cast.
"The easiest way to practice on a lake is to bend your (treble) hooks back so you won't get hung up. Because when you know you won't get hung, you'll try to make casts you wouldn't make otherwise."
How He Learned
Powers learned by example and out of necessity.
"My dad was a fantastic caster, and we lived on a lake (Boone Lake in eastern Tennessee) that has three cities around it so it received a ton of fishing pressure," he said. "After the first hour in the morning, you were fishing behind someone the rest of the day. You had to learn how to put it another 6-8 inches behind that boat dock.
"When someone else cast in there and made a big splash, it wasn't natural. My dad used a big Pop-R, and taught me how to cast it so when it landed on the water it would hardly make a ripple."
Bottom Line
"If you learn how to cast (well), somewhere down the road it will pay off," Powers said. "But it's like anything else. You won't be able to go out there and in 15 minutes be a great caster. Anything worth doing takes time. If it was that easy, I wouldn't be the first person (many people had) ever seen who could cast like that.
"I can't tell you that I've been in one specific tournament where I know for fact that the reason I've done well is because of my casting ability," he said. "But every tournament I go into, at one point or another (his casting skill has) paid off.
"In the Red River (FLW) tournament I won, I caught most of my fish flipping. But that bite didn't start until about 10:00. Up until then, I was throwing a fat plug or buzzbait. I was making short pitch-casts around trees that 20 people had already fished. I caught fish other people weren't catching."
The bottom line is that "one time or another, you'll need to make a cast and you'll need to be able to make that cast," Powers said. That one cast could win you a tournament.
