Hauling - pulling fly line through the guides

[Lou Bruno]

Paul

I didn't know either!

[Mangrove Cuckoo]

Other issues are not hauling to a fully straightened hauling arm finishing position on distance. Not hauling past the body on the forward haul. And bouncing the haul instead of a slight pause at the end of the haul.

Cheers, Paul

Paul,

That last sentence is very curious to me. And it touches on why I started the previous thread on the haul in the first place.

To simplify: I see three main ways to haul...

Haul and release;
Haul, hold for a beat or two, and then either release or feed up;
Or... bounce the haul.

I cannot say I've perfected it yet, but I have had some very positive feedback from the bouncing thing!

If I get it right, and it seems like I am "bouncing" at the same rate the rod tip unloads, I get by far the best results out of the haul. And it is a really significant difference.

I think I can bounce and feed back into the back cast, and I can bounce and feed into the delivery. The thing I have to concentrate on is almost immediately moving my hauling hand to allow the rod tip to do its thing.

What have you found different?

Gary

[Paul Arden]

Hi Gary,

Interesting question. My view is that holding the position while the loop forms and then repositioning the line hand while it is unrolling is best.

There is an easy test. Extend to maximum carry and then bounce the haul.

For me at least, this introduces slack. If you are going to upfeed as the rod is straightening it will need speed, but after this brief period (1/10s) you are going to have to immediately slow the upward line hand movement, otherwise your line hand will be faster than rod leg of the loop formation. A better option would be to simply shoot/slip line if this is the intent, as in the Snakehead shot.

On a more practical and less theoretical side, I find that developing a short pause at the end of the stroke enables my distance students to develop a longer carry. Everyone seems to come with an ingrained bounce to the haul, no doubt because of how we have been teaching it.

You certainly don’t need to bounce the line hand when carrying the head of the MED outside the rod tip. And if we do there is a high danger of introducing slack.

Interesting question Gary. It got me on the roof casting just now. I will continue to play with it because I am wrong about most things

This is not a bad video and one I pass to my students with WhatsApp.



Cheers, Paul

[Lou Bruno]

Paul

”repositioning the line hand while it is unrolling is best.”...
Where are you repositioning from, to where?
Lou

[Lou Bruno]

Same cast but in slow motion. When you haul in both directions the reel or rod hand stays in front of your line hand. Is that your repositioning move?
Lou

[Lou Bruno]

If so what are the advantages?

Lou

[Paul Arden]

So there are two parts to this Lou.

Part one is the haul. Similarly to rod arm movements, with short casts we make wrist hauls, and the longer the cast the more of the body we use. My distance hauls are driven mostly from the elbow straightening followed by the wrist.

Part two is how to fit the casting stroke around the haul. If the rod hand has not passed the hauling arm then we are losing some of the haul’s effectiveness, because the haul is the separation of stripping guide from the line hand. That’s why I talk about the importance of body rotation above.

If I don’t rotate the body before hauling on the forward cast, then I have to reach up with my line hand instead, and this puts us into a weaker, less-effective hauling position (hands aren’t then both separating on the next cast, and the reaching up to put the line hand there results in a straightened elbow, which then robs me of an effective haul. (You very commonly see this, and fixing it immediately causes an increase in line speed. I have drills for this of course I apparently have drills for everything!).

Quite a lot in this video:



Cheers, Paul

[Paul Arden]

I’m currently in organisation chaos. I have a couple of guests coming in Wednesday for three days at short notice And I’ve been working through the night last night installing Starlink Internet and a solar system to run it (always install solar panels at night!). And now I have to tidy up the boat tonight and do a supplies run for them tomorrow.

But I’ll put up some drills when I can, possibly next week. I use three for distance hauling. “Karate chop the head off” drill for the backcast haul, “Chicken Wing” for the forward cast haul. I have a “Launch Sequence” drill for putting the rod into the right position for the front cast. I also like the wristy haul drill in the video above because it gets people controlling the line with their thumb as well as utilising their wrists. Lots of benefits there: more line speed, easier to slip/shoot (you can see me doing that on the OSD/170 video) and it allows them to make half hauls and so on.

Those are all more advanced drills for people who can already double haul. For those who can’t I use the Triangle Method and numbers 1-2-3-5 as steps. People do look at me a bit weird when I say 5, but I can’t help myself any more.

Cheers, Paul

[Lou Bruno]

Paul

Good explanation.

[Graeme H]

Graeme

Thank you; doesn't Paul teach hauling away from the butt axis during the back cast? I'm I understanding you correctly.
Lou

I’m not sure what the butt axis is? Is that the rod plane?

Maybe I should have made more emphasis on the words "somewhat aligned"?

And no, it's still possible to move the hauling hand away from the "butt axis" and stay well within the rod plane (which is an imaginary 2D plane the rod occupies during the cast.)

When I say "the student is moving their hauling hand somewhat away from the butt axis", I'm referring to increasing the angle Θ, (shown below) which is the angle the line makes with the butt section of the rod in this diagram for the purposes of this discussion.

Some people move their hauling hand in such a way that Θ increases but the length of line between the hauling hand and the stripping guide does not increase significantly. They think they are "hauling" because their hauling hand is moving a lot, but in reality, it's not an effective haul. They can do this within the casting plane and still be ineffective. Some students manage to make Θ approach 90°.

An effective haul minimises the angle Θ and also reduces the chances of the line tangling with the reel, fighting butt or casting hand. There must be some degree of separation between line and gear, but we aim to minimise it. Paul is teaching a haul that minimises the angle Θ on both front and back cast, as we'd expect.

Cheers,
Graeme