Years ago I fished at night a lot and there was a never ending problem of the loose fly line getting caught up on things you could not see in the dark. These days I simply use a HAYES Stripper but here a few words of advice if you don't have a stripping basket. GO AND BUY ONE!

You could also try this figure of eight method I developed long before I had a basket.

A figure eight retrieve is very good in the dark. I think there are many reasons for this and a couple might be that it is generally a slow retrieve. It can mostly be a constant speed retrieve and most fish love this.

The great asset is that you can hold your retrieved fly line in the palm of your line hand and therefore keep it away from bankside vegetation, rocks etc. The down side is that most hand twist retrieves tangle when you are letting line out during the forward casts.

Try wrapping the line around the base of your index finger (have a look at the photo). This sort of turns your hand into an Alvey side cast reel. Believe it or not I can coil most of the 30 yards of fly line into my hand and cast it out tangle free each time. Try it.

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