Precision Casting? I Truly Amaze Even Myself...Just Not in a Good Way

As a matter of fact, while doing the research for this post, I came across a fella online who must feel a lot like yours truly. Here's the way he described his expertise...or more precisely, the lack thereof...in this area:

"My precision casting is excellent. I can hit a rock 100 yards away to test the durability of a new crankbait. I can catch a single limb 10 feet up a tree that even a bird would have a hard time landing on. I can hit the water next to a lily pad so harshly that anyone...or thing...halfway across the lake will be startled by the sound. I can work the land side of a shoreline better than most anglers can work the water side. And, I even have wrapped lures in power lines. Now that's my version of precision casting."

Evidently, not everyone is as lucky as Tennessee's own Bill Dance (left), who seemingly must have met a whole bunch of  "competent" bass fishermen over the years. He once described the majority of these anglers as being able "to place a lure exactly where they wanted it to land, time after time. They also exhibited superb familiarity with the tackle they use, whether it was baitcasting, spinning, fly-fishing, or spincasting.

"If you fish a little or a lot," Dance continued, "you soon recognize that the ability to drop a lure on a precise spot will mean more fish and strikes on a consistent basis. Nothing destroys confidence faster than the frustrating tendency to hang a lure in a bush or let it fall short of the target. Precision can make all the difference in the world, especially when fish are finicky or in hard-to-reach areas."

Must be at least some degree of truth in that because I saw an old BassFan article the other day that pretty much said the same thing. It reported there are several guys who usually can land a lure on a dime but only a few who can land on that dime 99 times out of 100. One of those in the latter category is FLW Tour pro Craig Powers (right)..."dead-eye," as he's known by some.

Described as "one of the most accurate casters fishing at the pro level today," Powers, who, like Dance, is from Tennessee, can land a lure on that dime every time, with scarcely a ripple at touchdown.

"Accuracy is everything," he said. "And the whole deal with casting accuracy is that it's really a lost art. Everybody wants to make long casts and use long rods, but I guess I'm kind of old-school. I come from the pistol-grip era, and I never got over it."

Powers began his quest for the perfect cast when he was young. He'd stand on his porch and cast to targets in the backyard, until his father arrived to take him fishing. Later, when he was slinging pizzas for Domino's, he took up a rod between the lunch and dinner rushes and practiced casting into the coin-return slot in the Coke machine.

So, why does casting accuracy matter so much? According to Powers, there are a few reasons, but foremost is pressured fish.

"In tournament situations," he said, "especially on tough fisheries with long practice periods, fish get wise pretty quickly. By the time the actual tournament rolls around, those fish have seen hundreds of baits moving by. Clear water only amplifies the problem."

That's when Powers applies his medicine.

"We've all been taught to throw past a target and bring the bait up to it," he said. "That's all fine and dandy if it's Wednesday, and the tournament doesn't begin until the next Wednesday. But I like to cast right on top of that fish after it's seen 20 million baits coming at it from afar.

"And the bait will enter the water without so much as a splash," he continued. "It's just kind of there, and you get a reaction bite.

"And if there's a single time of the year when dead-on accuracy is most important, it's during the spawn, when they're target-oriented. It also means that many are out of their comfortable environs, so they're spookier and less apt to strike.

"If you have a lake with buck-bushes, they'll spawn at the base," he noted. "If the lake has cypress trees, they'll also spawn at the base. You know where they are, and they know where you are. You take a bait and put it six inches over his head without a splashdown, and that's 90 percent of the game right there."

It's no secret that a shorter rod is more accurate, but Powers takes that almost to an extreme. He fishes a 6-foot model for topwaters. For the big Rebel Pop-R, he uses a 6-foot medium-action model 99 percent of the time. It has a short handle, which basically makes it a 5-foot 9-inch rod, without the pistol grip.

"I use a little backhand roll-cast," he said, "then feather the bait as it's about to splash down. You can do about the same thing with a Super Spook Jr., but it's just a little bit lighter, so instead of using a medium rod, I go to a medium-light."

For shallow cranks, Powers uses the same rod (6-foot medium-action). The exception is early spring, when he's running nothing-banks. Then, he uses a homemade 6-foot 6-inch spinning rod to make longer casts.

"Anytime I'm using a round-body plug and throwing it around trees and brush, I use that 6-foot medium," he noted. The whole deal, though, is just like having a box of tools. You have to match the rod to the bait, and the bait to the situation. And the bait dictates the rod.

"If I'm throwing an old Bagley square-bill," he said, "the 6-foot rod's not enough. The bait's too heavy, so I have to go to a 6-foot 6-inch model. But for baits like the Lucky Craft RC 1.5, the 6-foot medium's the deal."

Powers' "short" philosophy doesn't just apply to his rods. He also prefers short casts, and that shows in his advice for learning how to cast accurately.

According to this "dead-eye" Tennesseean, it's never too early, or too late, to learn to cast accurately. Just as important, you don't need to be on the water to do it. His advice for practice is to go in the yard, set up a series of targets, then raise yourself up a little (maybe stand on a porch), and tie on a favorite plug and make a million casts.

"That's exactly what I did," Powers added. "I set up three targets. Make the first no longer than 40 feet, then put one at 30 feet, and one at 20. I'd say 90 percent of my casts are 25 feet or less. The reason is, if I can make all my casts 25 feet or less, I won't be winding over dead water. The bait will be in the strike zone 90 percent of the day."

Although his strengths are topwater and shallow cranking, Powers also throws a jigworm.

"I like to fish what I'm comfortable with, but at the same time, checks pay the bills, and you have to do what you can to get one," Powers concluded.

I will admit that I've exerted concerted efforts a few times over the years to retrieve some $20 or $25 lures that I hung in hard-to-reach places. At no time, however, did I resort...or, for that matter, even think about...trying the extreme maneuvers you see at play in these two photos. Back in the early days, there was one occasion when I asked my son to shinny up a tree to reclaim one of my favorite lures. Hanging out the door of a Navy helicopter, tethered only with ropes, to shoot some official photos marked my one and only dalliance on the "wild side," and I was under direct orders then.