Underhand spey casting

[Lou Bruno]

Is this called underhanded casting due to the role the lower hand performs in the cast? Does the fly leg travel beneath the rod tip in all underhanded spey cast?

[crunch]

No and yes! Goran Andersson speaks of Underhand casting when he uses a single hand rod. I read somewhere he said it became Underhand casting because it was not exactly Spey casting.

When DH Underhand casting the bottom hand has bigger role than the top hand especially on a back cast. The biggest difference to Scandi style is a very upright rod on back cast (sweep) which is also slow and it is easy when the line head is short and the leader is long.

Line leg stays below hand on most Spey back casts most of the time so there Underhand does not differ much.

Here Göran Andersson does Underhand casting using a single hand rod and video is about 30 years old: It looks like there is Loop/Danielsson Dry Fly prototype on rod. I remember seeing that kind of reel 30 years ago when he visited one of the first Perhomessut. Unfortunately there is no text or subtitles but Drift is teached. There is also very "airy" snap cast shown many times.

Esa

https://youtube.com/watch?v=LUrujaJ0F34

[Lou Bruno]

Thanks, appreciate your input and video.

[Paul Arden]

Hi Lou,

I think that the style is very much orientated around optimising casting style to tackle ie short heads and long leaders. And that's why it can be considered also a single handed cast. But that's also confusing.

It doesn't help that also the "underhand cast" means or meant something else in other parts of the world ie a pendulum cast. Finally it certainly doesn't help that guys who use it don't call it Spey casting!

But yes I would say it's predominantly lower hand dominated Spey casting with stroke differences comparable to overhead casting differences between short shooting heads and long belly WF or DT lines.

Cheers, Paul

[Bernd Ziesche]

Hi Lou,
"Underhand casting" is a term, which was used by Göran Andersson (Sweden) a lot.
Göran started to shorten the traditional (long) Spey casting DH shooting heads significantly a long time ago. After having shortened his heads upto around 10-11 meters (coming from 20+ meters) he needed to cast within a much smaller arc. In order to keep the arc small, he used mainly his lower hand to control line speed and the upper hand to mainly control the size of arc. In traditonal Spey casting (loong heads) the Spey caster would use his upper hand more to increase line speed while using a wider arc.
When Göran Andersson started to work on making "his new style" famous throughout Europe he called it "Andersson style". Then he changed that into "Underhand style". At some point Hendrik Mortensen and others didn't want to support Göran at all and started using a new term "Scandinavien style" for the same kind of DH fly casting. Göran then sometimes called his casting Scandinavien style casting as well. So in the end it was Andersson/Underhand/Scandi style DH fly casting.
It still is about casting shorter heads within an arc that small, that you wouldn't want to use the upper hand for anything but mainly keeping the arc small.
In trying to get "Underhand style" famous (I think) Göran was trying to call his single hand casting underhand style as well. This to me doesn't make any sense since there is no lower hand coming into any play unless I start to haul my single hand casting. This is indipendant of my casting style.
The term underhand casting indeed includes overhead casting.
Seen from the pure physical point of view it was (and is) incorrect to say we don't use the upper hand for creating line speed. Of course we do add a lot of force only to keep the upper hand in position while moving the lower hand for the rotation. So it's more about practical use for teaching.
Cheers
Bernd

[Paul Arden]

Nice explanation, Bernd. One more thing is that it was heavily marketed by Loop tackle, which led me to name.a style I was using at the time as the "flip flop". This was named after one of my shoes.

Cheers, Paul

[Dag Midtgard]

Underhand casting with single rod is to use the littlefinger of the grip to rotate the rod around in the forward cast...

Not many have been aware of this fact, but it is as easy and vital like that!

[Paul Arden]

Hi Dag, that's interesting. For distance I use something called a "cradle grip" where the rod is held relaxed between thumb and forefinger. At the end of the Casting Stroke the rod is "turned over" using the third finger. It's difficult to desribe but I'll have a video up in the manual in approx two weeks which teaches this.

Cheers, Paul

[Dag Midtgard]

The essence of Gørans loading of the rod for his underhandcast, was a relatively short stroke with the arm. The movement if his arm were generated by moving/rotating the upper arm with the use of teres major and lattisimus dorsi, holding upper/and lower arm at a relatively fixed angle, and then using the wrist.

A powerful way of doing his cast, his biomechanics taken into considerations...

[Paul Arden]

Yes it is, it's very efficient. But it's not the longest way to throw of course.