Last Tuesday, I got to take my middle school club fly fishing at Legacy Community Center in Lee's Summit, Missouri. This is a place that I have taken club members before because the crappie move into the dam at the same time every year and it seems like the weather/water conditions do not seem to matter. What I have noticed over the last few years is that the lake is getting harder and harder to fish from the dam. Weeds, trees, and various plants have started to grow and clog up the bank. This year, it was even difficult to roll cast. We had to get creative and thankfully, our flexibility paid off.
It is important to remember that most of these students have only been fly fishing since September of 2024. While almost all of them are proficient with an overhead cast, they haven't worked much on roll casting or any other type of casting. When I saw all the brush and limitations that it was going to impose, I knew I had to come up with some strategy to help the kids out. After some thought and internal debate, I arrived on a cast that was simple enough to learn quickly and effective to get a fly to fish that weren't far off the bank. A bow and arrow cast seemed like the right tool for the job.
If you aren't familiar with a bow and arrow cast, it's pretty simple. You turn your rod upside down, let out a little bit of line, and pull the fly back towards your face like an archer pulls back a bow. All that's left is to point your rod and your spot and let your fly go. The kids thought it was a fun technique and picked up on it really quickly. More importantly, it was effective! The crappie were located only a few feet off the bank and easy to reach with a "slingshot cast" as some of the kids called it. In total, we caught over 150 crappie and the kids had a great time. One parent even said to me, "I see how it is. You saved the best trip for last." While this was indeed our last fishing trip of the school year, I couldn't have expected the amount of success that we had.
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