Video Tip How to Make an Aerial Mend, with Pete Kutzer
The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast
James Hathaway
4.8 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 9 August 2017
⏱️ 4 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tom is on vacation this week so we are bringing you a video this week. Want more videos? Let us know at [email protected].
Welcome to another installment of “Ask an Orvis Fly-Fishing Instructor,” with me, Peter Kutzer. In this episode, I demonstrate how to make aerial mends in your line, creating an upstream or downstream mend before your line touches down on the water. This is a great technique for when you’re casting across varying currents, and it will help you achieve better and longer dead drifts. By making the mend during the cast, you avoid having to break the surface tension to move the line, as you would with a traditional mend.
An aerial mend is quite easy to make, but there are two parts that will require some practice: the size of the mend and where it occurs along the line. By simply drawing a “C” or a “D” with the rod tip, you can create the belly required for a mend. The size of the letter you draw determines the size of the mend. How long you wait after the rod stops on the forward cast determines where that mend will occur. If you want it to be far out near the tip of the line, draw the letter right after the rod stops. To make a mend closer to you, wait a bit before drawing the letter.
With a little practice, you’ll get a feel for both the size and the location of the mend. Good luck!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | And the Today we're going to talk about aerial mens and how we can place a men in that line |
| 0:19.6 | either close to us or further out. |
| 0:23.0 | Very few times you're standing in a river and the current is uniform all the way across. |
| 0:27.6 | Sometimes we have some slow current in front of us, |
| 0:29.9 | faster current out by the fish and then slow current again. |
| 0:33.0 | Sometimes we might have varying currents and we have to be able to reposition the line |
| 0:37.3 | above or below the fly so we don't get any drag. |
| 0:40.8 | When that fly floats down the river, we want that fly to match the speed of the current. |
| 0:45.0 | That's going to give you a natural drift. |
| 0:47.0 | If we don't mend, that line could get a belly in the line, and that belly could cause that fly to drag out of that |
| 0:54.4 | fish out of that lie if you will or out of that scene so when we make our cast |
| 1:00.0 | what we can do is we can stop a rod and draw a D or looks like a C probably from the camera angle |
| 1:06.5 | Or we can stop the rod and draw a D or C in the other direction and that's going to put a mend in that line |
| 1:12.1 | If we do it early, right after we stop, |
| 1:15.1 | that men's going to be further out, closer to that fly. If we do it in the |
| 1:18.7 | beginning, or at the end of the cast, we stop and hesitate and then draw that little C or D then that men's |
| 1:24.8 | going to be much closer to us. So this is how it works. I take that rod and I'm |
| 1:30.4 | going to point it right at the camera so you can see it. After I stop the rod I'm going to point it right at the camera so you can see it. |
| 1:32.6 | After I stop the rod, I'm going to simply just draw a D or a C with a rod tip. |
| 1:39.4 | Stop the rod, draw a D or a C in the other direction. |
| 1:42.8 | And that can make your men to the left or to the right. |
| 1:45.7 | Let's see how it's done. |
... |
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