Right handed=left or , Left handed right or what?

osprey

osprey

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As far back as i can remember , and i don't remember who told me , probably either my dad or pap, if you cast right handed rig up your fly reel with the handle on the left (get em on the reel as quick as you can), why is it that some fly fishermen, even some experienced ones , cast right handed with the reel rigged with the handle on the right? Did this ever come up on here before?
 
dry fly fishermen-has any dry fly fisherman in the history of the sport ever had to fight a fish of the reel ?Or needed more than a cane pole to play the fish-
bit of tic but seriously
pan fishermen and DFF really can do fine with the traditional way or even automatics[whatever happened to Perrines?]
 
I normally fly fish right handed and all my reels have the handle on the left side. However there are always some streams or situations where I need to switch hands to get to where I want the fly to be. I recently blew out a rotator cuff in my right shoulder. Six weeks ago I had surgery to have three nice new screws piece it back together. I came out of the sling this past Monday and did some back yard casting left handed to get teh feel of the setup again. I will go left handed for the next couple of months and still keep the handle on the left and work my way back to going righty.
 
Cast left, reel right
 
Pete,i woulda thunk being in florida at least you would understand what i meant and Dave i assume you are left handed, i taught a very good friend how to fly fish and how to tie flies , all left handed and i'm right handed reel left, no matter how small , get em on the reel, occasionally you get to hear the drag work.
 
yes, I am left handed...which also means I am of the right mind!!!
 
I cast right and reel left. I also put them on the reel as much as possible if it makes sense. Sometimes with a lot of line out of the reel and a fish that doesn't want to help me take up slack, I will land them entirely by stripping line. Usually, if the fish is at least willing to hold tension, I will pinch the line to the rod shaft and use my pinky finger to to hold the line up behind the pinch and reel in the extra slack so I can get the fish on the reel. I set my drag light and palm the reel if it pulls drag. None of this is neccesary, just how I like to do it.
 
David wrote:
yes, I am left handed...which also means I am of the right mind!!!

Left handedness is a sign of early toilet training-- not that there's anything wrong with that.
 
Always wading , i'm no doc but wouldn't it make more sense to fight the fish with your left hand and just do the cranking with the right? I hope however you do it that it works and you get a bunch. Just like i always say, there is a silver lining to every cloud , yours could be that after your recovery you might be ambidextrious. sp?
 
knew what you meant-exactly-I never found any need to go rightleftt until I got into shooting heads-then the bigger reels had instructions to change so I did-my first reel was a hardy the size of a silver dollar with agate guide-never thought to change it even if I could as I broke in on baitcasting
-my original reply was good natured way of saying the reason some old timers have never changed is there wasn't any need to.Cast right-strip left works fine if fish aren't beefy enough to putyouon reel-IMHO
English Chalk streams with dry fly code where fly tackle was refined and defined were 2pdsers
 
left handed people are sinister according to the Romans-so wipe the smile[or whatever] off,Mr.J-family forum
 
Right handed casting, left hand retrieve.

I never understood the "traditional" inverse of that, but I do imagine when fighting big fish retrieve with your dominant hand is an advantage.

I'll let you know how that works when I start catching swordfish on the fly.
 
The traditional way to have the handle was on the side of your casting hand, so if you cast with your right you wind with your right. Kreh advised this, especially for salt water. The idea was that you would reel in slack faster with your dominant hand. I think he even did some experiments. There was a difference but it seemed pretty minimal as I recall.

As I recall there was also a discussion of this in Flyfishing through the Midlife Crisis by that NY Times editor whose name escapes me at the moment. An angler with "good hands" was one who made the switch from casting hand to reeling hand effortlessly. There even seemed to be some local (Potomac River smallmouth) code that if you don't have your reel set up requiring you to switch hands, that you showed yourself to be an inexperienced angler. I could be wrong about this since it has been probably 15 years since I read the book.

There is also a code among some that by gawd you must get the fish on the reel as soon as possible, or you obviously don't know what you are doing. This makes absolutely no sense to me since control is what you want, not some made up ideal of getting your line reeled in asap. It's not a bad idea and it makes sense to get the line out of the way, but it is not THE priority. Big fish will put themselves on the reel pretty fast anyway.

I cast right and reel left. I am comfortable with that and feel I have better control and sensitivity for applying pressure and manuervering the rod. Perhaps this is a remnant of my spinning rod days as a child.

I'm fairly sure Joe Humphreys casts left and reels right.
 
Right cast and left reel. Although when my are gets tired I can cast with my left (tight loops too).

Some Pfulger reels can't switch to left hand retrieve though.
 
I wore my casting arm out (right arm) while fighting albies and stripers last fall. I was setup to reel with my left hand. So I was casting a heavier fly rod, of which I wasn't conditioned to use, and holding onto a fish with the same arm.

Next trip to Montauk, I will be reeling with the right side to give my arm a break.
 
DGC is correct on the traditional setup.
A few years ago, I lost partial use of my left hand and while I can reel fine with it, I have problems holding the rod while landing a fish. I fish a lot of bamboo and the older Hardy St. George reels balance the rod well and IMO, look so-right on those rods. So, I started looking for older "left hand wind" Hardys and found that they are damn near scarce.
Very few reels were made LHW back then.
 
I have always cast right, and reeled left; probably conditioned by years of spin fishing in my youth. I play most all of my trout off the reel, and palm for braking action, as mentioned above. I agree it often doesn't matter on small fish, but on a trophy fish it can eliminate possible snarls on a sudden run; especially if you have any amount of line out. Also, I too, enjoy the sound of the drag when a healthy fish makes a strong run. As for salt water fishing, reeling with your dominant hand is probably more efficient. For my trout fishing, my fish will be played off the reel unless they are tiny. Also, the sound of a trout pulling out drag seems to really irritate the meat hunters, if last Sun. was any indication.
 
Pete41,
Automatics! Classic minnow fisherman rig, along with 3 feet of leader and a string of several shot. Zip, zip. Zip, zip.

Had one. Difficult to put back together when taken apart to clean. Band springs are dangerous - should be used for timepieces only.
Automatics made the bottom section rod and reel a good defensive weapon. Maybe drive in tent stakes. :)

Baitcasting is traditional cast right-handed, swtich rod to left hand to reel in. Why? Feel. Touch. Control of speed. But certainly not necessary.

I only use the left hand for stripping, reeling in flyline, spincasting, and for occasional need for variety. :)

But, either way is okay. As was used to be said, "If it feels good, do it!"

Don't dare touch people with the left hand! It's unclean (as per Jack's implied use of it). :)
 
vern wrote:

Baitcasting is traditional cast right-handed, swtich rod to left hand to reel in. Why? Feel. Touch. Control of speed. But certainly not necessary.

With a fly reel it's reel left cast right.Right handed hence it's the stronger of the two.
Had a guide in Alaska give me a lefthanded bait casting reel talk about confsion of the brain .His rational was his clients were used to spinning rods so why change.
I think that whatever works for you is the answer.
 
the first fly rods were weepy non bamboo rods and the early reels were winches that really were just for line storage so my remark about glorified cane poles wasn't as off the wall as it appeared
the real old timers like L J did in fact use right hand for holding rod and left hand for line control-stripping the line in by hand-so left hand reeling was not important
tradition dies hard in an established sport like fly fishing.
 
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