SLP Bashing

[Lee Cummings]

I don’t understand why SLP is getting such a hammering these days.

Any straighter tip path improvement drill over what I usually get faced with initially give an improvement, basic words used in real time like.... less, more, longer, shorter ALL help out in the field in achieving this.

Unless your happening to be blessed by teaching descendants of Einstein on daily basis and your scared they are gonna hang on every word, why not just offer up the visual goal of (achieving a theoretical straight line tip path possible) during the majority of the overall stroke...?

[Lasse Karlsson]

Who's bashing slp?

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

Hi mate,

I’m not sure about bashing but I think there is some confusion. On a short carry the SLP is what matters. However on a long competition carry the line’s straightness is matters more (assuming no tailing wave!).

Think of it this way, when you have 30’ of line out there, a tip travel of 15 feet is going to have a very serious impact on how the loop looks - try 170ing that!

However when you have 70’ of line outside the tip, the majority of line is only indirectly affected by the tip path. That’s why the 170 works. Of course there is some element of straightness even in a 170 but it’s incidental and apart from tracking we haven’t done anything to directly achieve it.

Mind you, since I don’t know why or who is bashing the SLP I have no idea whether this is on the mark or not. I actually suspect it’s completely off the mark, because I don’t know of any competition caster who doesn’t understand and appreciate the importance of the SLP.

Instructors on the other hand tend to live on a different planet

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

Instructors on the other hand tend to live on a different planet

Cheers, Paul

You just proved yourself an instructor then mate

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

Well I’ve never denied it

[Bernd Ziesche]

I don’t understand why SLP is getting such a hammering these days.

Hi Lee,
When I teach whatever "SLP"-concept to my students, a fair number of them back home easily may come across the original description of SLP to be the straight tip path during acceleration of the tip (RSP0 to RSP1). That old description has been put down in so many fly casting resources. To me it is a wrong theoretical ideal. Never I was able to see such a tip path in any video I made of any expert caster. In my understanding such a tip path should support the line hitting the rod during unrolling anyway.
Instead I see the tip mostly slightly rising in the beginning (vertical casting plane) and curving downwards in the last part of the arc. Both helps to avoid the line or the fly to hit the rod. This especially holds true when aiming for just the line speed one needs to bring the fly to the average target.
Theoretically the tip being accelerated on a straight line during the main part of accel. may work fine, if one aims for quite significant line speed. In average line speed all vids I made show a none straight tip path here as well.
I am fine with teaching a "partially almost straight tip path" for shaping tighest loops.
Since I teach to shape the desired loop anything from wide to tight, I again don't like that "PSLP" as a general ideal.

I have been teaching the old SLP concept for a decade long time ago. I know that it does help to increase the student's ability to tighten a loop, if desired. Of course that doesn't make it any less incorrect.

I am not bashing the old SLP concept. But I prefer to teach as correct content as possible. Also I want it to best possible match casting reality. The closest to straight tip path related casts I saw easily ended up with the fly-leg and the rod-leg getting to close to each other and making the loop collaps. For such a loop I have no use in fishing at all. In 99% of my fishing my theoretical ideal for a proper tip path looks much different.

About watching the tip path to control... I think the reason, why the old SLP concept wasn't understood to be wrong, was simple: Hard to see the details of tip path without video and slomos.

Regards
Bernd

[Paul Arden]

I remember having a discussion with Soon Lee about the SLP. It was more of an argument really. He was of the opinion that the casting stroke was the period that the rod tip travelled in a straight line. Actually maybe he wasn’t saying that, but I know that we had an argument. And whatever we were arguing about, was somehow tied up to the idea he had, that only tip paths that were perfectly straightt are true casts.

I’ve been talking about the SLP for over 15 years as something you almost want to achieve but not quite. In fact you don’t even have to get near to achieving it and the line will drop down and tangle with the rod tip. What is true is that the nearer to SLP that we can force the rod tip without getting evangelical, the tighter the loop, up to the point where the line collides with the rod tip.

Matchstick men models should never be applied literally. Did you guys ever watch open university on bbc2 in the middle of the night when it was the only thing on? We’re going back 40 years. Between that and the test card those are the two things I most remember about tv. You may not have had this in Germany but in the middle of the night you could turn on the TV and watch boffins in white lap coats discuss physics with equations and practical experiments. It was quite surreal actually, especially at the age of six. The reason I mention this is because Bill’s 5 Essentials reminds me very much to be like this. Very smart but don’t apply too literally.

If you want to actually make the model function in the real world you have to change SLP to simply Tip Path. Tip Path is affected by a combination of these things blah blah blah and the straighter it is without getting evangelical, the tighter the loop, until the flyline hits the rod tip.

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

Are you really sure it will hit the rod tip?

Asking for a friend

Cheers
Lasse

[Paul Arden]

An absolutely true SLP? Yes of course. In fact you don’t even have to throw a true SLP to hit the rod tip, in an overhead cast gravity will help you.

How did you explain it to him?

Cheers, Paul

[Lasse Karlsson]

I showed him the pure translation video you shot in Hungary, with an absolutly straight tippath and no hitting of the rod tip, and then explained to him that appart from Atlanta, physics tells us that different parts of the line can and most likely do go in different direction, so tippath is not the same as linepath.

He know understood after being shown, and agree that you are wrong.

Cheers
Lasse