Lefty or Righty? It Affects Your Drift
Have you ever thought about how your casting arm affects your fly presentation?
Revisited March 2025
Throwing dries, or maybe nymphing under an indicator? Your ability to maintain a drag-free drift is highly influenced by which side of the river you stand on... and it all has to do with which arm you use to cast.
As a left-handed person, I believe I am more aware of the differences between righties and lefties because I'm constantly reminded of how certain things just don't work for me compared to a right-handed person. For example, I will never truly enjoy using scissors.
On the river, I have been able to field test this theory alongside right-handed fly-casters. Interestingly, the first example of this dexterity-driven-dilemma arose when flipping tiny dry flies to trout holding in a lake inlet in central Colorado. Looking directly across the river, the water flowed from right to left as three of us traded off casting to the rising trout. We were all able to pull them up to the surface, but my two companions consistently got last-minute refusals, likely due to micro-drag, where something changed at the final glance to ultimately turn the fish off. Fortunately, I was able to overcome the refusals without a single change to my position or rig. And the only difference we could come up with was that my casting arm was nearer to the main river channel, reducing drag.
With more trips came more side-by-side opportunities to compare lefties vs. righties in varying situations, and a general theory developed.
For any person casting from the bank, regardless of casting arm, the best drifts happen when their casting arm is the arm closest to the middle of the river when looking upriver (if you assume that they are casting upstream). The caster will be able to achieve their longest drifts of drag-free flotation from this position. This position allows flies to more easily fall over matching currents with the fly line, and with a good mend you can almost always avoid the eddies and swirls that drag flies out of their best drifting lane. Also, mends are more easily achieved since the casting arm has a greater reach over the most downstream section of dragging line.
If the situation is flipped, you lessen the reach of the rod, increase casting difficulty, and increase the need to frequently mend. This becomes painfully apparent when casting dry flies on a slow-flowing river with picky fish, or when fishing a super-slow long floating drift under an indicator where you're constantly mending slack upstream.
Especially when casting to large rising trout, sneak into your best casting position. Righties, get on river right to cast, and lefties, get on river left to cast, for the best chances at landing a rising trout. Remember river left/river right is defined as if you're floating downstream. More simply, try to get your casting shoulder closest to the middle of the river or closest to the main seam that you're fishing.
At times that might not be possible, but at least it will get you thinking more critically about the most basic assumptions we all make about getting the best dead drift.
Tightline Caveats
Interestingly enough, if you're high-stick nymphing, the opposite can hold true if you have a short distance between you and your flies, and are making short drifts. In close quarters, and without mending in play, you want a short direct line between you and your fly to maintain contact at all time, so everything is reversed. Fear not, this isn't as killer in tightline nymphing situations where you have more control over how your subsurface flies move, and it’s also buffered by a longer reaching rod and thinner tippet. But as you move further away from your target, I've found I prefer to have my dominant arm closest to the current seam when quartering upstream in the usual high-sticking stance, to lengthen my drift as long as possible.