Newb

[Carol]

Greetings board members!

Carol here from the Colorado high country where fishing is pressured and the season too brief. Like others have admitted, I've been a lurker to the website for awhile, occasionally doing a sneak-and-peak when I need a better understanding of some aspect of casting that no one else seems to explain in a way I "get." I've also been an Arden video spectator, watching and re-watching, learning more each time I watch as my intuitive understanding expands.

Fly fishing snagged me 15 years ago, before it gained the faddish status of cool. It took 12 years of flailing and a torn rotator cuff before I found a mentor and started on the CCI track. As good as my mentor is, I sometimes need the way others explain things. Finally ready to minimize the e-Social Distance, I asked to join the board where there are some true casting geeks. Paul was gracious enough to grant me entry to this crazy place.

COVID-19 is overtaking the thoughts and behaviors of Coloradoans at the moment, but COVID reminds me of a great thing about our sport: "Social Distancing" is built into fly fishing. In fact, the more distance between anglers, the better!! While others are going crazy from either isolation or quarantine (voluntary or otherwise), fly anglers are saying, "So, what, again, is the problem with more distance between people?"

Thanks, again, Paul for allowing me into this herd of nerds.

-Carol

[Graeme H]

From a nerdy Hird, welcome to the forum Carol.

Cheers,
Graeme (Hird)

[Paul Arden]

Hey Carol, welcome to the Board. This corona virus is obviously having an impact. I’m really with James on this, and think that the reaction is bigger than the problem.

Still, I’m not watching from the jungle and pretty isolated.

Please start some topics!

Cheers, Paul

[Boisker]

I should stay in the Jungle Paul... moored on your boat isolated on the Lake... seems the safest bet...

I’d be surprised if James, as a scientist, still held the same view.... I think a lot of people just compared it to Flu, without any real scientific basis... it’s not normal winter flu.
Italy had 475 deaths today, 1st week of March it was still in the low 10’s per day, the rate has significantly increased since... Italy is 2 weeks into serious social lockdown, without massively reducing social interaction all the experts agree the death rate would just keep increasing... hopefully it will start to plateau soon.

The U.K. is hoping that if people stick to the isolation measures (not yet as tough as Italy’s) then the total number of deaths will be under 20,000... if they are ignored then the number of deaths will be far higher.

I initially thought it was probably being blown up out of all proportion... having watched numerous infectious disease specialists across the world talk about it... I’ve given up on that thought.

Even the bloviating buffoon trump has had to change his tune...

[James9118]

Hi Paul,

I think you may have slightly mis-interpreted my thoughts from the 5th March FP. My comments were targeted at those taking un-researched actions such as buying and wearing totally ineffective face masks, perhaps these are the same people who have been panic buying bog-roll recently.

I'm fully behind the the government scientific adviser's and their suggested course of action - when have you heard them mentioning that a builders dust mask will help?

That said, sometime next year we will get to see the statistics published for the death rate in each country - then we can determine if there's a spike in the death rate due to Covid-19 or whether the people dying off were those who were likely to die of other causes anyway.

Cheers, James.

[Paul Arden]

Of course. I’m not sure why Bernd can’t go to the sea to fish however. That seems a bit drastic! I’m just going to potter around the lake and go fishing. Unless Richard can’t get home and comes back I reckon I’ll be fishing on my own for the next months.

[nicholasfmoore]

Welcome, Carol! I really do hope you find the board useful, it is an amazing community full of very knowledgeable people. You absolutely need a 'toolbox' of analogies and phrases. One analogy could be a light bulb moment for a student (sorry Paul i stole your phrase there!) and another one could give a result that is not desirable. IMO Pauls set of videos on single handed casting is the absolute best in the industry, and i don't say that lightly!

The Covid-19 situation is very concerning. People in the UK are not taking it seriously, it's very aggravating.

Hi Paul,

I think you may have slightly mis-interpreted my thoughts from the 5th March FP. My comments were targeted at those taking un-researched actions such as buying and wearing totally ineffective face masks, perhaps these are the same people who have been panic buying bog-roll recently.

I'm fully behind the the government scientific adviser's and their suggested course of action - when have you heard them mentioning that a builders dust mask will help?

That said, sometime next year we will get to see the statistics published for the death rate in each country - then we can determine if there's a spike in the death rate due to Covid-19 or whether the people dying off were those who were likely to die of other causes anyway.

Cheers, James.

Absolutely james! Where on earth did people get this from?! I have a Sunstrom SR200 with a gas filter, i used this at my previous job. A dust filter is not going to protect against viruses.

If you were going to do it properly you'd need a type 1 PPE hazardous materials suit with a PPE decontamination shower and intensive training. Someone in Leicester was seen shopping in Aldi with a 'bio hazard suit' it wasn't by the way, i think that's a bit much

They are calling him the 'hazmat shopper'

[Paul Arden]

I’d wear a bio-suit just for a laugh

Hey Carol, I would love to hear back on what your mentor suggests. The problem with the IFF definitions is that they are not very useful for teaching - ok I’m bias. The definitions go back years. They were tested here on the Board and then we got wind of a set that the FFF definitions committee were going to submit. And so very quickly we wrote our own and launched them. Unfortunately they still used their own - with a few modifications. But at least we can have proper discussions using ours and we haven’t had a definitions based argument for a long time!!

We have a qualitative set of definitions. They have a quantitative set of definitions, that are very difficult to measure. That’s fundamentally the difference.

Cheers, Paul

[Paul Arden]

I have of course posted that in the wrong topic

[Carol]

Thanks, all, for the welcome. I'll try to adhere to "a light bulb moment," especially when I forever overcome casting bulbous loops. :0

My mentor is an MCI on the casting board of governors who doesn't always agree with FFI (but then, who does??). We had a long email discussion about the difference between creep versus bad timing. In essence, creep is unintentional rotation of the rod in the direction of the next cast whilST the line is unrolling in the direction of the previous cast. It shortens the arc, which is key. Whereas bad timing typically is intentional (the caster thinks they are doing the right thing) and the casting stroke is not shortened or the arc narrowed. (But hey, I've had bad timing with a shortened arc and stroke too --Josephine Shmackapop here.) We got into the weeds about some related off-shoots. I like the weeds, because it really makes me think instead of just drinking the proverbial Kool-aid. As for drag in casting, that's when guys dress up like women and go fishing, which should be avoided because all the glitz can sparkle and scare fish. Seriously, I read both Paul's and Mac Brown's definitions (they are remarkably similar) and the definitions make sense, but my ability is not to the point where the definitions spark a light bulb moment, unless it's an incandescent 2 watt night light on a failing generator.

As for COVID-19, it has me scared. I live at 9100' (2774 m). One of my husband's employees has pulmonary hypertension, likely due to living at high altitude for a long time. She's been working from home most of the last few months because she has to use O2 24/7 until she and her husband move from altitude. She just notified everyone that she has a very high fever, a headache and body aches. If COVID, it could kill her. This is serious shit.
With the flu you can get a vaccine and, although you may still get the flu like 2019's flu season, you still have some immunity and Tamiflu. This COVID virus is very different, more virulent, subject to mutation, and no vaccine or way to treat it yet. It can kill young children, twenty-year-olds or millinneals who are immunocompromised or who have conditions such as asthma or cystic fibrosis, etc. In some perverse sense it is the planet's way of culling the population of the weak and careless (Darwinism), but then only the ignorant 20-year-olds would survive, and they don't have the skills to run a $500,000 grain combine or a $10 million sewage treatment plant, or, or, or .... But why hoard crap-wrap, I don't get that. Why not hoard kale? You can either eat it or use it as wipe.