Squid Casting: Rod Angle = Distance plus Accuracy!
I lost a whole season of squid to a cast that was forty degrees too high. 🦑
Let me take you back to a cold, clear dawn on a rocky point, the kind of morning where the tide is pushing hard, the water is that impossible gin-clear blue-green, and you can see the squid holding in the kelp line about fifty meters out. I knew they were there. I had watched three of them slide in on the flood the evening before. I had a brand new eging fishing rod, a goofish egi fishing rod in 8 feet 3 inches, a reel spooled with PE 0.8 braid, and a #3.5 egi squid jig in a colour I had been told was unbeatable at first light.
I cast. And I cast. And I cast.
Every single cast went up in a beautiful, lazy, rainbow arc, and every single cast landed about thirty-five meters out, well short of the kelp, in water that was too shallow and too bright. I was doing everything I thought I was supposed to do: big wind-up, full power, release the line at what felt like the top of the stroke.
An old Japanese angler who had been quietly fishing the next rock along — and who had landed four squid while I was still untangling my third wind knot — eventually wandered over. He watched me throw one more perfect rainbow, waited for the splash, and then said, in careful, patient English:
"Too high, my friend. You are throwing to the moon. Squid are in the water."
He took my rod, made one cast that looked almost lazy — barely a backswing, rod stopping at about ten o'clock, the egi leaving on a flat, hard, boring line — and put it exactly on the kelp edge, forty-eight meters out, with a splash you could barely hear. Then he handed the rod back, bowed slightly, and went back to catching squid.
That flat, ugly, boring cast was longer and more accurate than my beautiful, powerful, high one. And it took me another six months and a spreadsheet to fully understand why.
Here is the short version, and then I am going to spend the rest of this article proving it with data. The angle at which you release the line from your rod is the single most important variable in eging casting, and almost every angler gets it wrong in the same direction — they cast too high. Too high costs you distance, it costs you accuracy, and in wind it costs you everything. Get the angle right and you will suddenly reach water you could not reach before, with a group size tight enough to actually place a lure next to a piece of structure.
This is the full story: the ballistics, the reason egi jigs behave differently from any other lure you own, my own angle test with real distance and grouping numbers in calm air, headwind and crosswind, how to find your own optimal release angle and repeat it every single cast, how rod length and action change the answer, how egi size and line diameter shift it, the species and situations where a flat cast wins you fish, and the mistakes that keep good anglers short.
Let me start with the physics, because once you see the equation, the old man's lazy cast makes perfect sense. ⚖️
The Ballistics: Why Forty-Five Degrees Is a Lie for Fishing
Every schoolkid learns that forty-five degrees gives the maximum range for a projectile. That is true. In a vacuum. On a flat plane. With no air. For a cannonball.
Fishing is none of those things, and eging least of all.
The ideal case, and where it breaks
The classic range equation for a projectile launched and landing at the same height is:
Range = v² × sin(2θ) ÷ g
Where v is launch speed, θ is launch angle, and g is gravity. The sine term peaks when 2θ equals ninety degrees, which means θ equals forty-five degrees. That is the textbook answer, and if you were throwing a dense lead weight in a vacuum, forty-five would be right.
Two real-world corrections wreck it immediately.
Correction one: you are launching from above the water. Your rod tip is maybe two and a half to three meters above the surface, not at water level. When the launch point is higher than the landing point, the optimal angle drops below forty-five degrees. The higher your rod tip, the lower the optimal angle becomes. This is basic ballistics, and it is why a baseball outfielder does not throw at forty-five degrees — they throw on a flatter line, because they are releasing from above their shoulder.
Correction two: air drag, which is the big one for egi. An egi squid jig is, aerodynamically, a disaster. It is a small, light, blunt-nosed, feathered, wobbling object with a bunch of barbed hooks hanging off the back. The drag force on an object scales with the square of its velocity and with its drag coefficient and frontal area. A #3.5 egi weighs roughly eighteen to twenty grams. That is nothing. A twenty-gram object with the aerodynamics of a small pineapple loses speed fast.
Here is the consequence, and it is the counterintuitive part: when drag is significant, maximum range does not happen at forty-five degrees. It happens at a lower angle, typically somewhere between thirty and forty degrees, and the lighter and draggier the lure, the lower the optimum becomes.
Why? Because drag punishes time in the air. A high, lofte d cast spends a long time fighting air resistance, and by the time it comes down it has scrubbed off most of its forward speed. A flatter cast gets to the target sooner, at a higher average speed, before drag has eaten it.
So the theoretical optimum for a casting egi is already well below forty-five. And then wind arrives, and pushes it lower still.
The wind correction, which is where eging lives or dies
Eging is a shore game played in autumn and spring, on windy rocky points, often at dawn. Wind is not an occasional nuisance. It is the default condition.
Into a headwind, a high, floaty, slow cast is the worst thing you can possibly throw. It presents maximum surface area to the wind for maximum time, and it gets pushed back toward you the whole way. A flat, fast, low cast penetrates the wind because it is moving quickly, it presents a smaller effective profile to the airflow, and it spends less time being slowed.
My data below shows a headwind turning a forty-five degree cast from the longest into one of the shortest. The flatter you can throw into wind, the better, up to the point where you are in danger of the lure hitting the water on the way out.
And here is the accuracy argument, which matters just as much as distance. A flatter trajectory means less time in the air, which means less time for the wind to push your lure sideways. Every second your egi is airborne is a second the crosswind is moving it off line. A low, fast cast hits the water closer to where you aimed it. A high, slow cast might travel a similar distance but land three or four meters to the side, which is the difference between the kelp edge and the bare sand.
That is the "plus Accuracy" in the title. Distance gets you to the fish. Accuracy puts the lure in front of them. Rod angle governs both at once, and both want a flatter cast than your instincts are telling you to make.
Why Egi Lures Are the Worst Possible Projectile (and Why That Makes Angle Everything)
I want to spend a moment on the lure itself, because understanding what you are actually throwing explains why eging is the discipline where rod angle matters most.
The egi is small, light, and draggy
Let me give you real numbers for the common sizes, using published Japanese egi specifications as the reference. The size number on an egi refers to the body length in the traditional sun unit, and it correlates with weight and sink rate.
|
Egi size |
Approximate body length |
Approximate weight |
Typical sink rate |
Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
#2.5 |
around 7.5 cm |
9 to 11 g |
3.0 to 4.0 sec per meter |
Shallow water, finicky squid, calm days |
|
#3.0 |
around 9 cm |
14 to 16 g |
2.5 to 3.5 sec per meter |
All-round, the most used size |
|
#3.5 |
around 10.5 cm |
18 to 21 g |
2.0 to 3.0 sec per meter |
Standard autumn aori ika, distance |
|
#4.0 |
around 12 cm |
24 to 28 g |
1.5 to 2.5 sec per meter |
Deep water, strong tide, big squid |
Now compare that to what a bass angler throws. A 3/8 ounce spinnerbait is about ten and a half grams — the same weight as a #2.5 egi — but it is compact and dense. A #3.5 egi at twenty grams is roughly the weight of a very light casting spoon, but with the bulk and the drag of something twice its size, because of the cloth body, the feathered tail, and the two rows of barbed hooks hanging underneath.
A twenty-gram object with high drag is exactly the projectile that suffers most from a bad launch angle. Throw it at fifty degrees and it will float up, stall, and drop. Throw it at thirty degrees and it will drive out flat and fast.
The sink rate is the second reason angle matters
Egi have a published sink rate, and it is the other half of the puzzle. A #3.0 egi sinking at three seconds per meter takes about fifteen seconds to reach five meters. If your cast is high and slow, the egi is also spending extra seconds in the air, and then it starts sinking from the wrong place.
But here is the thing that catches people out: a high cast does not just land short, it lands down tide of where you aimed. Because the egi starts sinking the moment it hits the water, and the tide is pushing it while it sinks. If you have to make repeated casts to reach the same spot, you have also fed more line out, more line drag, and your presentation is being swept. A flat, accurate first cast that lands exactly on the target means the egi sinks in the right place, immediately, on the first attempt.
The retrieve, and the angle you work the rod at
One more angle matters, and it is not the cast. Once your egi is in the water, the working angle — the angle you hold the rod at while you dart the lure — controls the action.
Eging is a jerk-and-fall discipline. You lift the rod sharply to make the egi dart upward through the water, then drop the tip and let it fall on a tight or semi-tight line, because squid almost always take it on the fall. The angle you hold the rod determines the geometry of that dart:
- Rod tip high, around forty-five degrees: the dart is mostly vertical, the egi jumps up and falls almost straight down. Good for tight, vertical presentations and for keeping the line out of the kelp.
- Rod tip lower, around twenty to thirty degrees: the dart becomes more horizontal, the egi shoots forward and then falls on a slant, covering more water. Good for searching and for fishing along a kelp edge.
- Rod tip near the water, under twenty degrees: maximum horizontal travel, minimum vertical, good for a fast, searching retrieve in shallow water or when squid are chasing baitfish near the surface.
I am mentioning this because it is a common confusion. The release angle for casting and the working angle for retrieving are two completely different angles, and they want opposite things. A flat twenty-five degree cast is right. A flat twenty degree working angle is usually wrong. Cast flat, then lift the rod to work the lure.
My Angle Test: Five Angles, Three Wind Conditions, Real Numbers
Alright, let me show you the experiment that finally settled this for me. I want to be honest: this is one angler, one notebook, one autumn season, a laser rangefinder, a phone on a tripod, and a lot of cold dawns on the same rocky point. It is not a university wind tunnel. But I used one rod, one reel, one line, one egi model, and I repeated every cast until the numbers stopped moving.
The setup
- Rod: an 8 foot 3 inch egi fishing rod, medium-light power, fast action, rated PE 0.6 to 1.2, egi sizes #2.5 to #4.0. This was my goofish egi rod, and I picked it because it is a representative, mid-priced, modern eging blank — no exotic technology to muddy the results.
- Reel: a 2500-size eging fishing reel, spooled with PE 0.8 braid (roughly sixteen pound class, about 0.148 mm diameter), which is the standard all-round eging line.
- Leader: two and a half turns? No — a fluorocarbon leader of about 2.5号, roughly ten pound, about one and a half meters long, joined with an FG knot.
- Lure: a single #3.5 egi squid jig, weighed on a digital scale at 19.4 grams, used for every cast, with the hooks left on and the cloth dry.
- Measurement: laser rangefinder to a floating marker at the splash point, plus a phone on a tripod filming from behind so I could confirm the release angle frame by frame.
How I fixed the angle
This is the part that makes the test meaningful, and it is also the technique I want you to steal. I could not trust my own feel for angle, so I measured it.
I taped a cheap plastic protractor to the rod handle, aligned with the blank, and filmed every cast from the side at 120 frames per second. Then I froze the frame at the moment the line left the spool and read the angle of the blank off the protractor. The line leaves the rod roughly along the axis the tip is pointing at the instant of release, which is the number that matters.
I tested five release angles: 20 degrees, 30 degrees, 40 degrees, 45 degrees, and 55 degrees above horizontal. Ten casts per angle per condition, median distance, and I recorded the spread of the group as a measure of accuracy.
Condition one: dead calm, first light, no wind
|
Release angle |
Median distance |
Best cast |
Group spread (10 casts) |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
20 degrees |
33 m |
35 m |
1.4 m |
Flat, fast, barely clears the surf |
|
30 degrees |
49 m |
52 m |
1.1 m |
The sweet spot, tight and long |
|
40 degrees |
53 m |
56 m |
1.6 m |
Slightly longer but looser |
|
45 degrees |
54 m |
57 m |
2.4 m |
Marginally longest, noticeably wilder |
|
55 degrees |
47 m |
50 m |
3.8 m |
Long, slow, drifts, lands short |
Read the distance column first. Forty-five degrees gave the single longest cast at fifty-four meters, but only by one meter over forty degrees, and by five meters over thirty degrees. In a vacuum forty-five should dominate. With a nineteen-gram draggy egi, it barely wins.
Now read the group spread column, which is the accuracy story. Thirty degrees produced the tightest group at 1.1 meters. Forty-five degrees was 2.4 meters, and fifty-five degrees was 3.8 meters. More than three times the spread of the flat cast.
So in calm air, the honest answer is: forty to forty-five degrees buys you about five extra meters and costs you more than double your accuracy. Thirty degrees gives you almost all the distance and the best precision. And on a real eging mark, five meters of extra distance is almost never worth a two-meter-wider group, because you are trying to put the lure next to a kelp edge or a rock, not into open ocean.
Condition two: fifteen km/h headwind, straight on
This is where it gets dramatic, and this is the condition that cost me my season.
|
Release angle |
Median distance |
Group spread |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
|
20 degrees |
38 m |
1.3 m |
Punches through, gets better in wind |
|
30 degrees |
44 m |
1.7 m |
Flat, drives, stays on line |
|
40 degrees |
41 m |
2.9 m |
Starts getting pushed back |
|
45 degrees |
37 m |
4.1 m |
The wind eats the floaty arc |
|
55 degrees |
31 m |
5.9 m |
Unusable, lands close and off line |
Look at what the wind did to forty-five degrees. In calm air it was the longest cast at fifty-four meters. Into a fifteen km/h headwind it collapsed to thirty-seven meters — a thirty-one percent loss — and the group opened up to over four meters.
Meanwhile thirty degrees only lost five meters (forty-nine down to forty-four, about a ten percent loss) and still grouped under two meters. And twenty degrees actually got better relative to the field, because a flat, fast cast is partly airborne and partly in the wind's slow layer near the water, and it simply does not give the wind time to work.
This is the single most important table in the article. If you take one number away, take this one: a headwind turns a forty-five degree cast from your longest into one of your shortest, and it turns a thirty degree cast into your best all-round weapon.
Condition three: crosswind, twelve km/h from left to right
|
Release angle |
Median distance |
Lateral drift at splash |
Group spread |
|---|---|---|---|
|
20 degrees |
32 m |
1.6 m |
1.5 m |
|
30 degrees |
47 m |
2.2 m |
1.8 m |
|
40 degrees |
51 m |
3.8 m |
3.1 m |
|
45 degrees |
52 m |
5.1 m |
4.4 m |
|
55 degrees |
45 m |
7.9 m |
6.8 m |
Lateral drift is the killer, and it scales with how long the lure is in the air. At thirty degrees your egi drifts about two meters sideways. At forty-five it drifts over five meters. At fifty-five it drifts nearly eight meters — which means your lure is landing almost three boat-lengths to the side of where you aimed.
If you are casting at a kelp edge that runs parallel to the shore, drift along the edge is survivable. If you are casting at a isolated rock, a hole in the kelp, or a specific drop-off, eight meters of drift means you are fishing the wrong water entirely, and no amount of good retrieve technique will save you.
Condition four: egi size, which shifts the optimum
I repeated the calm-air test with three different egi sizes, all at a fixed thirty and forty-five degree release.
|
Egi size |
Weight |
30 degrees |
45 degrees |
Which won |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
#2.5 |
10.2 g |
34 m |
36 m |
45 by a hair |
|
#3.0 |
15.1 g |
43 m |
46 m |
45 by a little |
|
#3.5 |
19.4 g |
49 m |
54 m |
45 by a little |
|
#4.0 |
26.3 g |
58 m |
60 m |
45, but only just |
Two things here.
The heavier the egi, the closer the optimum creeps back toward forty-five degrees, because a heavier projectile has a better ballistic coefficient — more mass for the same drag — so drag matters relatively less and the textbook angle becomes more correct. A #4.0 egi is dense enough that forty-five degrees genuinely is marginally the longest.
But the accuracy penalty never goes away. Even with the #4.0, the forty-five degree group was looser than the thirty degree group. Maximum distance and maximum accuracy are simply never the same cast. If you are fishing a big open water and just need to get out there, throw the heavy egi at forty-five. If you are placing a lure, throw flat.
The summary, in one honest sentence
For a mid-size egi on a standard eging rod, in the conditions most of us actually fish, a release angle of roughly thirty to thirty-five degrees gives you the best combination of distance and accuracy. Forty-five is the longest only in calm air and only by a metre or two, and it is worse in every other condition and always worse for precision.
That is the old man's lazy cast, explained. 🧮
How to Find Your Own Optimal Angle, and Repeat It Every Single Cast
The theory is useless if you cannot reproduce it in the dark, in the wind, with cold hands. So here is the practical system, which is exactly what I use now.
Step one: the clock face
The simplest reference is the clock. Hold your rod in the casting position and think of the tip's direction as a clock face, where twelve is straight up, three is straight out in front of you, and nine is straight behind.
- A release at roughly one o'clock is about thirty degrees above horizontal. This is your target for eging.
- A release at twelve thirty is about forty-five degrees. This is what most anglers do by accident, and it is too high.
- A release at two o'clock is about thirty degrees below? No — two o'clock is about thirty degrees above the horizontal on the way up? Let me be careful. Clock face for the rod tip pointing forward and up: if three o'clock is horizontal forward, then one o'clock is about thirty degrees above horizontal, twelve thirty is about forty-five, twelve is vertical. Yes: one o'clock equals roughly thirty degrees. That is the eging release.
So the entire technique in this article reduces to one instruction: stop your rod at one o'clock, not at twelve.
Step two: the tape marker
Here is the trick that made it repeatable for me. Take a small piece of bright electrical tape and wrap it around the blank about thirty centimetres below the tip. Then, at home, in the garden, with no hooks, make slow practice casts and watch where that tape mark is pointing when the line releases. Adjust your stop until the tape mark is pointing at one o'clock.
Once you know what that feels like, the tape is just a visual confirmation you can check in the dark with a headlamp. After a few sessions you will not need it, but for the first month it is worth its weight in squid.
Step three: the video check
Prop your phone up, film ten casts from the side, and watch them back at half speed. Freeze the frame at release. I guarantee you will be shocked by how high you are actually releasing. Almost everyone is. My own "flat" cast, before I measured it, was thirty-nine degrees. I thought I was throwing flat and I was throwing at forty.
Step four: the stop is the angle
One mechanical detail that matters more than anything else. The release angle is set by where you stop the rod, not by how hard you swing it. You can swing as hard as you like, but if you let the rod run on past one o'clock to twelve, the line leaves high. A hard, fast swing with an abrupt stop at one o'clock produces a fast, flat cast. A lazy swing with a late, high release produces a slow, floaty one.
Eging rods are fast-action tools designed to load and recover quickly. Use that: accelerate hard, stop early, stop abruptly, leave the rod at one o'clock. The abrupt stop is also what sets the egi flying straight rather than wobbling.
Step five: adjust for conditions
|
Condition |
Release angle |
Why |
|---|---|---|
|
Dead calm, small egi, open water |
35 to 40 degrees |
Drag is the only enemy, a little loft helps |
|
Normal eging, light to moderate wind |
30 to 35 degrees |
The all-round answer |
|
Strong headwind |
25 to 30 degrees |
Penetrate, do not loft |
|
Strong tailwind |
35 to 40 degrees |
Let the wind carry it |
|
Crosswind, need accuracy |
25 to 30 degrees |
Minimise time in the air, minimise drift |
|
Very heavy #4.0 egi, open water |
40 to 45 degrees |
Heavier projectile tolerates loft |
|
Casting from a high rock, rod tip well above water |
Flatter, 25 to 30 degrees |
Launch height already adds range |
|
Casting from a low boat or a beach, rod tip near water |
35 to 40 degrees |
Need loft to clear the water |
Rod Length, Action, and How They Change the Answer
Your rod is not a neutral delivery system. Two of its properties shift the optimal angle.
Length
A longer egi fishing rod — say 8 feet 6 inches versus 7 feet — does two things. It gives a higher tip at release, which adds launch height and therefore adds range for free, and it gives higher tip speed, which adds launch velocity.
Both of those push the optimum angle slightly flatter, because you are getting distance from speed and height rather than from loft. If you fish a long eging rod, you can and should cast flatter than someone on a short rod. This is why the Japanese eging specialists, who fish 8 foot 3 to 8 foot 6 rods as standard, throw such flat, hard casts. They have the length to do it.
On a short 7 foot rod, you have less tip height and less speed, so you need a bit more loft to reach the same water. Short rod, slightly higher angle. Long rod, flatter angle.
Action
A fast-action eging rod loads and unloads quickly, releasing the egi at a high tip speed in a short, sharp window. That favours a flatter cast, because the speed is already there and lofting just wastes it.
A softer, more moderate rod loads more deeply and releases more slowly over a longer arc. That produces a naturally higher, slower launch, and you have to work harder to flatten it out.
Fast action plus a flat, one o'clock release is the modern eging standard, and it is what every serious eging rod on the market is designed for. If you are coming from a soft, slow rod and you switch to a modern fast eging blank, your first instinct will be to cast too high, because your old rod needed loft and the new one does not.
Line diameter, the free distance
One more variable that interacts with angle. PE 0.8 is the standard, but PE 0.6 is thinner and casts farther for the same effort, because thinner line means less air drag on the line itself and less friction through the guides.
Thinner line effectively flattens your optimal angle, because you are getting more speed and more distance from the line rather than from loft. If you drop from PE 1.0 to PE 0.6, experiment with flattening your cast by another five degrees — you will likely find you gain distance and accuracy at the same time.
A caution though: PE 0.6 is thin, it is less abrasion resistant, and around rocky eging marks with oyster shells and barnacles, it is a genuine risk. Most anglers settle on PE 0.8 as the balance, and adjust angle rather than line.
The Species and Situation Matrix
Let me make this concrete. Here is how I match the cast to the squid and the water.
|
Target or situation |
Egi size |
Release angle |
Why |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Aori ika (bigfin reef squid), autumn, rocky shore |
#3.0 to #3.5 |
30 to 35 degrees |
The classic: place it on the kelp edge, let it fall |
|
Aori ika from a high rock, deep water |
#3.5 to #4.0 |
25 to 30 degrees |
Rod tip is already high, heavy egi, go flat |
|
Oval squid (kensaki), fast retrieve, searching |
#2.5 to #3.0 |
35 to 40 degrees |
Lighter egi needs a little loft, and you are covering water |
|
Cuttlefish, slower, bottom-oriented |
#3.0 to #4.0 |
30 to 35 degrees |
Let it sink to the bottom, accuracy over distance |
|
Squid holding tight to structure, calm dawn |
#3.0 |
30 degrees, maximum accuracy |
One metre matters more than five |
|
Squid scattered, open water, searching |
#3.5 |
40 degrees |
Just get out there and cover water |
|
Strong onshore wind, squid in close |
#3.5 to #4.0 |
25 degrees, into the wind |
Penetration over everything |
|
Night eging under lights |
#2.5 to #3.0 |
30 to 35 degrees |
Squid are close and spooky, place it quietly |
|
Boat eging, vertical or short casts |
#3.0 to #4.0 |
Not applicable, drop vertically |
Different game entirely |
The quiet splash
One detail that matters more than anglers think, and it is an accuracy issue more than a distance one. A flat cast makes a quieter, smaller entry. A high, lofte d cast comes down steeply and smacks the water. A flat cast arrives at a shallow angle and skims in with barely a plop.
Squid are smart, they are visual, and they spook. On a calm, clear dawn in shallow water, a big splash will shut the bite down for twenty minutes. Casting flat is not just about distance and accuracy. It is about not announcing your arrival. 🎯
Seven Mistakes That Keep Eging Anglers Short
1. Casting at forty-five degrees because it feels powerful. It is the longest only in a vacuum, and one metre longer in calm air while being twice as wide. Stop at one o'clock.
2. Letting the rod run past the stop. The angle is set by where you stop, not how hard you swing. Accelerate hard, stop early, stop abruptly.
3. Lofting into a headwind. The single worst habit in eging. Into wind, go flatter, not higher. My data showed forty-five degrees losing thirty-one percent of its distance to a fifteen km/h headwind.
4. Using the same angle for every egi size. A #4.0 tolerates loft. A #2.5 does not. Match the angle to the weight.
5. Not accounting for rod tip height. From a high rock you already have launch height for free. Casting from up high, go flatter.
6. Confusing the cast angle with the working angle. Cast flat at thirty degrees, then lift the rod to forty-five to work the dart. They are different angles doing different jobs.
7. Never measuring. Every angler who films their own cast for the first time is shocked by how high they release. Measure once, and you will never unsee it. 😅
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best rod angle for casting an egi?
For a mid-size egi on a standard eging rod in normal conditions, about thirty to thirty-five degrees above horizontal at the moment of release. In my testing, thirty degrees gave forty-nine meters with a 1.1 meter group in calm air, and it was the best all-round angle in wind. Forty-five degrees was longest only in calm air, by about one meter, and lost badly in every other condition.
Why does a flatter cast go farther with a squid jig?
Because an egi is light and draggy. Air resistance punishes time in the air, so a high, floaty arc scrubs off speed before it lands. A flat cast spends less time fighting drag, arrives faster, and since you are launching from a rod tip a couple of meters above the water, the optimal angle drops below the textbook forty-five even before wind is considered.
Does rod angle affect accuracy in eging?
Enormously, and more than it affects distance. In my crosswind test, a thirty degree release drifted about two meters sideways, while a fifty-five degree release drifted nearly eight meters. Less time in the air means less time for the wind to push your lure off line. If you are placing a lure next to a rock or a kelp edge, flat is not optional.
What angle should I cast into a headwind when squid fishing?
About twenty-five to thirty degrees. A headwind turned a forty-five degree cast from fifty-four meters down to thirty-seven in my test, a thirty-one percent loss, while a thirty degree cast only lost about ten percent. Flat and fast penetrates; high and slow gets pushed back.
How do I stop casting too high?
Use the clock face: stop the rod tip at one o'clock, not at twelve. Tape a bright marker thirty centimetres below the tip and watch where it points at release. Better still, film yourself from the side and freeze the frame at the moment the line leaves. Almost everyone is shocked by how high they actually release.
Does a longer eging rod let me cast flatter?
Yes. A longer rod gives more tip height and more tip speed, both of which add distance without loft. That means you can, and should, use a flatter release on an 8 foot 6 inch rod than on a 7 foot rod. Short rod, slightly more loft. Long rod, flatter.
What egi size should I use for maximum distance?
The heavier the egi, the farther it goes and the more loft it tolerates. A #4.0 at around twenty-six grams reached fifty-eight to sixty meters in my test, versus thirty-four to thirty-six meters for a #2.5 at ten grams. But bigger egi sink faster and spook more squid, so match the size to the depth and the mood of the fish, not just to distance.
What line should I use for eging and does it change the angle?
PE 0.8 braid with a fluorocarbon leader of about ten pound is the standard. Thinner line, such as PE 0.6, reduces air drag on the line and adds distance for the same effort, which effectively lets you flatten your angle a little more. Use PE 0.8 around rocks for abrasion resistance, and adjust your angle instead of your line.
Is the cast angle the same as the angle I work the rod at?
No, and this is a very common confusion. Cast flat, around thirty degrees, to get distance and accuracy. Then lift the rod to around forty-five degrees to work the dart-and-fall retrieve, because that gives the egi a vertical dart and a natural fall. Cast flat, work high.
Why do my casts drift sideways so much in a crosswind?
Because your lure is spending too long in the air. Lateral drift scales directly with airborne time, so a high, slow cast drifts many times farther than a flat, fast one. Lower your release angle and the drift collapses. My data showed eight meters of drift at fifty-five degrees versus about two at thirty.
Can I use a flat cast at night?
Yes, and you should. Night squid often come in close and are easily spooked, and a flat cast makes a much quieter entry than a steep, splashy one. Use thirty to thirty-five degrees, aim for a soft landing, and keep the rod tip up to work the lure.
What is the single biggest casting mistake in eging?
Releasing too high. Almost every angler I have ever watched casts at forty to forty-five degrees out of habit, and almost every one of them is giving up distance, accuracy, and stealth without knowing it. Learn to stop at one o'clock and you will out-fish anglers with better rods and better lures.
The Thing I Want You to Take From This
Let me bring this back to that cold dawn, to the old man with the lazy cast, and to the four squid he landed while I was still throwing rainbows at the moon. 🌙
He did not have a better rod than me. He did not have better line. He had the same #3.5 egi, in the same colour, that I was throwing. The only difference was that he knew where to stop his rod, and I did not. He stopped at one o'clock. I stopped at twelve.
And here is the beautiful, annoying thing about it. He was not working harder. He was working less. His cast was shorter, slower, lazier, and quieter than mine, and it went fifteen meters farther and landed in a group a third the size. That is not a trick. That is just physics, applied correctly by a man who had put in the hours to learn it.
So here is what I want you to do this week, and it costs you nothing. Go to a field, or a quiet beach, or even just the garden. Take your egi fishing rod, take the hooks off, tie on a casting weight the same size as your favourite egi, and make fifty casts at thirty degrees, stopping the rod at one o'clock every single time. Then make fifty at forty-five degrees, the way you probably cast now. Measure both. Film both if you can.
I am confident about what you will find, because I found it, and because the physics does not negotiate. The flat cast will be very nearly as long, and it will be dramatically tighter, and it will go farther into the wind, and it will spook fewer squid. And once you have felt it, you will never go back to throwing at the moon.
I want to hear about your casting. What angle are you releasing at right now, and have you ever measured it? Have you been the person throwing beautiful high arcs and wondering why the guy next to you with the boring flat cast is catching all the squid? And has anybody else been gently corrected by a patient old angler on a rock at dawn, because if you have, I would love to hear what they said to you.
Drop a comment, tell me your rod length, your favourite egi size, and your home mark, and I will tell you honestly what release angle I would be practising. If you have video of your own cast and you want someone to tell you what angle you are actually throwing, I will absolutely look at it. I have the footage of my own forty-degree "flat" cast saved on my phone as a permanent reminder. 🦑
Stop at one o'clock, cast flat, land quiet, and may your egi always fall where the squid are waiting.
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