The Board

You need to film yourself....
89 cool! And damn

Cheers
Lasse

Awesome session. Quite fascinating. I’ve been teaching stuff I now think is borderline incorrect. I know your up to 75, a big jump for me has been working on backhand delivery shots. Fully open. That’s basically backcast 170 all over. But that forearm blocking has been inspirational. It’s completely transformed everything top down. I think that the conversation with John and Phil recently has facilitated that. That has been my biggest jump so far. That really opened up a lot of doors tonight.

Still a long way to go though. I will get there. I now know that. I just don’t think I’ll get there by next week I don’t know what the next jumps will be yet.

There are a few things I’m finding particularly challenging: closed stance accuracy and the Cradle Grip.

Right must go fishing now.

Cheers, Paul

Paul Arden wrote: ↑Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:52 am Anyway, as I wrote previously, it’s not just about the process of teaching the left hand, it’s the same as teaching any advanced skill; we actually need to work out exactly what it is that we are doing.

This happens naturally in the context of double-handed casting. And the result, in my opinion, is exactly what you wrote: I need to understand everything I am doing on my "better" side. Which side is better can actually vary. Traditionally my single spey has been better with my non-dominant hand up, because over the years I have happened to fish so many days from that side in a particular river.

For me, the word switch in switch cast is a perfect reminder of how many hours I have spent on nothing but this cast, switching sides, trying to understand the difference between the two sides.

It’s totally fascinating. Once again I was up on the roof until dawn last night. I started off with a 90’ carry. This isn’t a 90’ carry under control but it’s a 90’ carry for half a dozen false casts. That’s still a huge jump for me.

But last night the big thing was something I’ve always said which is that the hauling hand fine controls the cast. So I used the left to teach the right how to control the left. Thats the exchange of information that’s going on between my hands/ body sides at the moment!

It’s quite easy to swap hands when the loop begins to unroll on the forward cast, so I can go right/left/right/left etc. I’ll be doing this and just when I’m ingrained the right hand will pop in something funky. The left is like “fuck you!!” And tries to learn it.

What amazes me is how good (technical) my right hand is and how advanced is the left hand haul. It’s the same for any developed caster, we do things automatically without realising it. They are oracles of information that are just waiting to be tapped. However my right hand haul (remember this is the hand that writes) got to show my left hand haul, that it’s quite easy to pull line off the reel under control, while falsecasting, instead of yanking it off as my left hand has been doing for yonks! The left is like “thanks dude”.

So the process is what does this side of the body know/do, and how to transfer that information over? And what drills to use to do this. Pull-back for example. First try to slow it down. Didn’t work. So teach a Snapcast. Right does a Snapcast, left does a Snapcast. Make a soft Snapcast. Crossover. That’s pull back feeling. Now back up the ladder and apply to the forward cast. And then apply to the back. And it goes on and on. (I didn’t know you can use the Snapcast to teach Pullback).

For me casting is totally tied to feel. Vision is important (glimpsing the loop) because it gives you feedback but it’s feel that we use to apply force. I realise now just how critical the haul is. It’s the acceleration of the haul and how that is timed. Want to speed up the stroke, then speed up the haul at the right time. And for me at least, the haul directs the backcast, and pulls directly away from target.

I believe that I can not only be better with the left than I am with the right, but I will be better with the right than when I started. The “knowledge” that my hands have acquired and the skills that they have developed are immense. That’s why we find it so difficult. We say we are not coordinated with the left but we have this highly developed haul that is basically leading the cast. The left haul is telling the right hand what to do. That’s how I see it.

We talk - or I do - about one side of the brain controlling the opposite side of the body. But that’s highly misleading. We are bringing subconscious movements to the conscious level and then trying to find ways to make them automatic on the other side of the body.

I don’t think we do a good job in teaching the haul. We talk about down-up and triangle methods, but we do not give the haul the credit and time it deserves. I stop teaching it when I get to the haul controls the stroke but that’s just the key to the box. There is a vast amount inside the box that needs unpacking.

I see great value in presentation casts when it comes to learning the finer rod hand skills. I can see that I will be working on these for some time. Trying to learn the overpowered curve mend (JB) off the left is quite an exploration.

Fascinating. It feels good to be all over casting again.

Cheers, Paul

Think it feels good now?

Wait til you start catching "left handed" fish!

BTW... hows that cork-screwing of the guides working for ya when you go left-right-left-right?

I have caught fish left handed not very often but certainly it’s happened!

Twisting the rings is fine, you either haul around the blank or against the stripping guide. I know quite a few people who have them in at 90, although I don’t favour this.

Dialling in the snakehead shot will be interesting. I’ve pretty much taken it to pieces over the past few years teaching it, it will be interesting to see what I’ve missed and if I find some interesting new ways of teaching it. I’m still not entirely sure how I slip line on the angle changes because I’ve only briefly touched on this a few times while teaching. So I’ll certainly get to work that out. But all in due course!

Cheers, Paul