Wind as a teaching/learning aid?

[George C]

I'm curious if people have particular strategies for making the most of practice on windy days (say 15kts up).
Obviously such days are great for working on "dealing with wind fishing strategies" such as weak hand casting, over-shoulder stuff, oval cast, and fishing accuracy. What I'm more interested in is if and how people make use of the wind as an aid to work on their (or their student's) particular areas of weakness.
Thanks for any thoughts.

[Morsie]

Yeah, apart from the windy day casts its a great opportunity to teach them to watch their backcast and to get the backcast and the forward cast the same. So many want to cast with the wind. I'll stand them with the wind blowing at 90 degrees onto their back so the wind is affecting equally the bc and the fc. I don't like teaching on windless days.

[Mangrove Cuckoo]

You can't beat a nice windy day to work on tightening your back cast. Face down wind and focus on what is going on behind you. There is hardly a better tool for dialing in the movements required to punch a tight back cast loop into the wind.

As for accuracy for fishing casts: place a hoop out in an open field, then start hitting it. After dialing-in what is required from where you start, move around the hoop in either a clockwise or anticlockwise manner, stopping about every 15 degrees. When you have moved 360 degrees around back to the original location you have experienced and learned how to cast accurately from within every wind direction.

Down here, the common tactic to flyfishing on a windy day is to tuck behind an island and fish in the comfortable lee. The thing is, the predator fish really appreciate the upwind side where bait is concentrated and the wind chop supplies cover. That is where that tight back cast become essential.

[Graeme H]

Since it's windy here most of the time, I nearly always teach (and fish) in the wind. My students will also nearly always fish in the wind, so having their lessons on a windy day is ideal.

Cheers,
Graeme

[Paul Arden]

For me personally I don’t practise distance on very windy days and will work on other stuff if I feel the need to cast. Shots, backhand, into the wind and so on. 15kts however is fine for a normal lesson.

If it’s significantly stronger - say 30kts - I try to avoid teaching in it. The entire lesson seems to become about “dealing with the wind”. Which for me is a module and not a lesson. It’s nice to have some wind for the module of course!

Nowadays things are a bit different because my guests visit for 5-7 days. That wind module can be coincided with the afternoon breeze. The only drawback is that it’s damned hot at this time of day. The only time we regularly get strong winds here is on the front of a tropical storm. And there is a lot of electricity around! In fact it’s usually a sign to take cover.

Windy days for me are days best spent fishing. If I lived in Perth I would have no choice.

I remember fishing on Ardleigh Reservoir a few times in Late August when it was physically impossible to row the boat into the wind, so we would pull it upwind along the dam (one person pulling at the other pushing). We brought along four concrete anchor blocks. Positioned on the edge of the ripple the fishing was superb. We would anchor to the stern in those conditions, ie nose-down. The boat yaws far less this way. It was very important to cast at separate times!

Cheers, Paul