Essentails Revisited

[grunde]

Proper acceleration of the rod leads to What? A proper stop is stopping what? Together they create a proper power application.

That is in my opinion the essence of fly-casting, and thus the greatest fly-casting wisdom. It is all about "proper power application", the rest is just semantics and words we use to describe what it is and how to get there

Cheers,
Grunde

[scotty9]

Proper acceleration of the rod leads to What? A proper stop is stopping what? Together they create a proper power application.

That is in my opinion the essence of fly-casting, and thus the greatest fly-casting wisdom. It is all about "proper power application", the rest is just semantics and words we use to describe what it is and how to get there

Cheers,
Grunde

You could argue that that is the essence of the good form thread too.

[Chase Jablonski]

I don't believe this to be true apart from which I wouldn't know how to do it, Chase.

You don't accelerate from the start of the stroke to deceleration?

[Bill Gammel]

Mike, I have left the wrong impression. The booklet was to be a how to for beginners. It was not to be for instructors. The instructor program didn't exist when we were writing. Dad and I knew that this was going to be my one chance at writing anything about fly casting on a national stage. In the 1980's fly casting instruction was dominated by only a few instructors and they were very stylistic in their instruction. Very much a "do it like me and you will be good like me" approach dominated the instruction. There were several camps as for as styles and it was not easy to jump from one style to the next. We wanted to write something that would help everyone regardless of style. It was meant to be the basic information needed to create a standard over head cast.

We had a lot of discussion about what should go into the booklet and what was essential. The concepts in the booklet were not new. There is not one original idea of the five. The original thought was in the presentation and selection of the five as all you need. To my knowledge that was the first time all five were presented together.

Now Dad and I knew we had the essentials. Now how do you present them and how do they work together. As stated before we chose to present it as power application (acceleration and stop in one essential.) I still believe that to be the best way and would not changed it. I have changed the presentation of the essentials as shown in the steps of the video. Basically, we discussed how certain essentials seemed to work together. You can't do one without doing the other, but it actually took me years of teaching to fully understand how they work together. Dad past away before we really figured it out.

To answer your question, the order of presentation is the only thing I would change about the essentials. The essential statements are still pretty well written. I now could write a lot more about how they work together and affect each other, but that is for Sexyloops not a 24 page booklet to beginners. The absolute best compliment I ever received in my life was Jim Green stopped me in the hall one day and said that we had written in 24 pages what they all had tried to write in 200 pages. He then told me what page I had mention the crisp stop and said we should have written that 13 times on that page. I still believe that for the purpose of the booklet and basic instruction a stop is essential to proper power application. Now it may not be any more a stop than the straight line path is straight, but they both are such good imagery that they have worked for years.

Hope this helps.

Bill

[Bill Gammel]

I just noticed that all those "thought provoking" posts I make. Paul thought so much of them he erased them all. Now I only have credit for 7 posts.

[Paul Arden]

It's a new board Bill, all previous posts are permanently archived and can be seen by visiting the link to the old Board! What order would you present the five essentials in now?

Chase, it's "constant" acceleration that I disagree with.

Cheers Paul

[Mike Heritage]

In the 1980's fly casting instruction was dominated by only a few instructors and they were very stylistic in their instruction. Very much a "do it like me and you will be good like me" approach dominated the instruction. There were several camps as for as styles and it was not easy to jump from one style to the next. We wanted to write something that would help everyone regardless of style. It was meant to be the basic information needed to create a standard over head cast.

Do you think the Essentials have been instrumental in flycasting becoming less stylistic or creating a more standardised style?

Mike

[Bill Gammel]

Mike I do believe the booklet had an affect on instruction. I believe they were well received and although never adopted by the casting certification program officially, they influenced the testing greatly. It quickly became acceptable to answer the test questions using the essentials as a template to formulate the answer. The essentials used with Bruce Richards 6 step method are one the best diagnostic tools out there for any instructor or person trying to self diagnose cast problems.

I see the essentials differently now. I see the SLP as the ultimate essential. This is the goal of a straight line, overhead cast. It can not be accomplished without all of the essentials working together. So I now teach them in a different order. I start out with 15 feet of line outside the rod tip and the line pinned under a finger, however, I don;t mention slack. It just confuses them. I teach them about a smooth acceleration to a stop. I have them do this by sliding loops along the ground. After this I teach them to adjust the width of the casting arc. Then I move them to casting side arm with the line waist high. Here they learn their timing and the pause essential is added. Now they are getting lots reps by false casting. I then move the cast to vertical and teach them about the straight line path (right to left or not throwing a curve cast) Then we add line and I teach them to adjust their stroke while reading loops. Show how all 5 essentials work to gather to throw a u shaped loop. I then emphasize no slack as they learn to shoot line.

Now I know that was a brief description and I hope you can follow it. It allows the student to learn each essential individually and gets them casting very quickly. Now I believe Grunde could make a good argument for power application to be the number one essential. I might not even argue with him. However, I like this way because it gives such a good visual of the ultimate goal of a u shaped loop with the contrast of a fat or tailing loop.

In short I would not change much. I would have added a more detailed description of the concept of creep. (this would have saved me a lot of pain later on) Plus, I would have presented them as I did above, not just as 5 individual essentials. You can present them as 6 or 7, but I don't think you are going to be that much more successful than just presenting the 5 correctly. I hope this has helped.

For those of you who have my DVD. Use it as an outline for your casting classes. I have had a great deal of success starting beginners that way and the one foot at a time drill is worth its weight in gold for life long development.

[Brian McGlashan]

In the 1980's fly casting instruction was dominated by only a few instructors and they were very stylistic in their instruction. Very much a "do it like me and you will be good like me" approach dominated the instruction. There were several camps as for as styles and it was not easy to jump from one style to the next. We wanted to write something that would help everyone regardless of style. It was meant to be the basic information needed to create a standard over head cast.

Do you think the Essentials have been instrumental in flycasting becoming less stylistic or creating a more standardised style?

Mike

Can I have a pop at answering this Mike?
I don't think the essentials have made flycasting less stylistic nor standardised but I do think they have made Flycasting easier for 100s no, 1000s of beginners to understand.
Remember casting in it's basic form is relatively easy but for some it is easier to complicate it just for the sake of change.
I am all for questioning things but if something ain't broke why fix it.?

Brian.

[Bernd Ziesche]

What I don't like about the stop, is that for many it implies that we stop hard, abruptly, to let the spring throw the line. Great way of making tailing loops for most. Not a great way of making nice loops! Basicly that teaching works best when the student doesn't do exactly what we tell them to do

Hi Lasse,
watching a lot of great casters (you are one of them) "abrupt" or "crisp" are words, which (for me) match pretty well with how I saw them stopping their rod in most of their casting.Watching them in slow motion didn't change my expression either. Using those terms in my teaching led to the results in my student's casting I was looking for. Tailing loops never have been an issue here at all.
If our students do exactly what we tell them or not, depends on how exactly we understand/define what "abrupt/crisp" means of course.

I like to give my students a small exercise:

1) Try to stop the rod too abrupt.
2) Try to stop the rod really soft.
3) Try to stop the rod abrupt.

3) usually (almost always) leads to what I want them to show up with.

Hearing other instructors talking about "stopp-less" casts or a "smooth stop" in my experience often resulted in long discussions. I think Gilly's post (58) is a great example. I fully agree with her post and like the way how she describes her method of teaching.

Anyway I am pretty sure we all agree on acceleration and deceleration of the fly rod being essential in fly casting. If "abrupt" or "crisp" does not match for the decel. part of the stroke, then what term/wording would do a beter job?
Greets
Bernd