Gaze Behaviours in Fly Casting Accuracy

[Paul Arden]

Guiding is a separate business Bernd. It’s a lot more work and organising. I’ve stopped casually fishing with friends here and only guide, host or fish alone. Otherwise I can spend my entire life working without having enough money to fix boats, engines or trucks. Now we are definitely off-topic!

Cheers, Paul

[easterncaster]

Many students arrive with a forward stroke that looks like they are trying to push a box onto a closet shelf that is just a touch too high.

I'm actually kinda' proud of that image

[easterncaster]

We’ve lost the original thread now Craig but what is appropriate in one set of circs is inappropriate in another isn’t it ?

Yes, very much so Mark.

*and sorry for the thread divergence - it is Sexyloops after all

[VGB]

Hi Bernd

In all my education for teaching I was taught, that demonstrating and having the learner watch is a very effective method. In my own experience as being a teacher I soon had to realize, that students often have a strong visual focus rather than a listening focus. If I want to make sure they listen, I need to be excellent in my talking and not having my movements detracting most of the attention. Seems fair to summarize, that we are used to learn by watching a lot. Thus it's logical we too have automatically trained to have an idea where to look in order to get the information we want.

I agree with vision being the dominant sense for learning but this does not automatically lead to them knowing where to look and what to look for. It is our job to guide and monitor their focus of attention:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... %2C%202015).

Research on expert-novice differences across different domains have identified that experts pay greater attention to relevant information whereas novices are often distracted by irrelevant information (Brams et al., 2019; Gegenfurtner et al., 2011; Tien et al., 2015).

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

I used to do that drill for my own benefit, using each joint and a freestyle combination to transition from the tightest to the widest possible loop, using all of the joints and body movements. Loop size being an external cue, of course

One of the most useful exercises that I’ve done for years, which I’ve talked about a number of times, is to stand on something high — a boat roof, car roof, house, rock — and to carry just sub maximum, so that it is comfortable, and then to play. Play with different strokes, patterns, timings, force application, amount of force, different ways of using the body… and study the resulting loop.

It’s difficult to do this on the ground, because keeping a long line from ticking when you are experimenting is difficult. But from a height, a failed to fully unroll loop can usually be recovered.

What is fascinating is how small changes in movement affect loop shape. It’s how I learned to carry a long line. It’s also hugely entertaining and better than TV which I don’t have!

Cheers, Paul

[Bernd Ziesche]

I agree with vision being the dominant sense for learning but this does not automatically lead to them knowing where to look and what to look for. It is our job to guide and monitor their focus of attention:

Agree.
It's both imo. Students have goals in mind. Some they may not even have realized yet, but automatically adjust their focus the moment they "sense" something valuable (for them seen from their view) coming up. That's the natural part as I see it.
As I said before, it's us needed to support changing focus for some keys they didn't know or realize to be valuable yet.
I really believe both is at play.

[Bernd Ziesche]

Paul,
That standing on the latter almost max carrying line for how long you'd recommend to train it and do you recommend it to all levels? And what line is needed?

[VGB]

Agree.
It's both imo. Students have goals in mind. Some they may not even have realized yet, but automatically adjust their focus the moment they "sense" something valuable (for them seen from their view) coming up. That's the natural part as I see it.

I think apart from absolute novices, most students have goals that are unobtainable in the short term because they overrate their own skill level and I include myself in that classification. In practice, some might look at the loop but not know what it is they are looking for, others will not specifically look at anything without a target, others will try and track the fly leg but can't keep up because of the additional cognitive load (that was me as well).

regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

Paul,
That standing on the latter almost max carrying line for how long you'd recommend to train it and do you recommend it to all levels? And what line is needed?

Very high level. If you are working on distance carry it needs to be a long head or DT. How long to train? Until you run out of wine.

[Bernd Ziesche]

Vince,

Paul,