Mental Practice

[VGB]

Hi Paul

I wasn’t trying to provoke an argument, just trying to place the disciplines in the open/closed skill range and degrees of pattern fuzziness.

How many competitions are done with a side cast or cross body? An angler has to deal with all of of the weather conditions that you mention plus variable depth of water for wading, weighted/unweighted flies of various sizes from pin head to budgie, overhead cover, spooky fish, drag, foliage, loose footing, rolling seas and highly variable tasks that are more akin to your spontaneous challenges.

Whilst there are transferable skills, student objectives should impact upon the way we teach. When was the last time you taught someone to cast with their grandads cane rod? It was about 2 weeks ago for me and I will have another one next week.

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

I actually find it humorous and hopefully it will happen many times more.

It’s always obvious once you know. During lockdown I read a book called Zen Mind, Beginners Mind that I quite enjoyed. My favourite extract was ““In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

How many competitions are done with a side cast or cross body?

You need a side backcast 170 with a strong wind pickup. I’ve had to cast crossbody in accuracy as well as deliver backcast in distance many times.

Having said that I agree with you Obviously the constraints of a competition make the casting requirements narrower than if there were none. That said many fly fishers only know one cast and try to put the fish at the same distance by walking closer or further away. What we ultimately want is a competition for every cast!

I’ve always thought we should have a free-style competition set to music. If that’s too easy then standing on a kayak surfing downstream past the judges. That would be hilarious!

Cheers, Paul

[John Waters]

Do we visualise the casts from first person or third person perspective? I use a mix myself but mostly third person.

Cheers, Paul

Hi Paul,

I think visualisation is no different from any other sport training. It needs to be structured around both result goals (what will you achieve and when you will achieve it) and technical goals (how will you achieve it). The work I've done on the subject is that 1st person is better for movement because it activates muscles with feel eg. feel the platform beneath, feel the stretch as you position the upper body, feel the release of that stretch as you accelerate the rod hand, feel the reverse force as you brake etc. Whereas 3rd person allows you to see yourself or another person, performing the targeted movement. That's where videos are important. They allow you to personalise the imagery, you want to see yourself performing the task, see yourself in the performance environment. Both have their uses in skill development

I'm a bit different, I mostly use 1st person because in casting, feeling movement outcomes is important.

John

[Paul Arden]

I definitely use a mix, John. I’m not entirely convinced that I’m not processing both at the same time. I regularly play back my shots afterwards. It has always interested me that the playback is in slow motion and from the third person’s perspective.

But I’ve simply not tried it for skills acquisition
In others or for practising. I certainly use it for preparing anglers for both competitions and trips. I will suggest it more.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Hi Paul

That said many fly fishers only know one cast and try to put the fish at the same distance by walking closer or further away.

That’s an individuals constraint but it means that there’s a lot of water they can’t fish. In my local area, you would often need a snorkel if you wanted to get closer because there’s very few places to bank fish and there’s plenty of deep pools. Being able to contrive casts is important for fishing here than knowing the 4 names for a jump roll.

The chalkstreams are generally more sedate but a few clubs are now managing the banks for the benefit of the bug life instead of the angler that doesn’t want to get wet feet or have anything interfere with their 10 to 2 cast. There are far more books littering the banks to begin with

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

It’s amazing how inaccurate your average caster actually is. I’ve seen anglers score zero in 4 rounds of accuracy. Which means that they have missed 16x1.8m targets. It seems that many length adjustments are made my moving their feet around over repeated delivery casts.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

1.8m is more than half the width of the streams around here

Regards

Vince

[John Waters]

I definitely use a mix, John. I’m not entirely convinced that I’m not processing both at the same time. I regularly play back my shots afterwards. It has always interested me that the playback is in slow motion and from the third person’s perspective.

But I’ve simply not tried it for skills acquisition
In others or for practising. I certainly use it for preparing anglers for both competitions and trips. I will suggest it more.

Cheers, Paul

I use a mix too Paul, both are important for success. 3rd person shows you what to do, 1st person internalises the feel of doing it. If you add a script to the mix, you increase the success rate.

John