High Pressure Shots

[George C]

There is a flip side to all this while fishing ( as opposed to teaching/learning). The pressure and associated adrenaline rush is part of the fun. The failures are as important to the experience as the successes. Indeed, if I find myself shaking after catching….or missing….a fish I consider it a very good day.

[Paul Arden]

I’m very aware that “guide pressure” can be the case with guides/clients George and I try very hard not to put them in that position. That would make an even bigger hurdle to overcome and I’m not sure anyone would ever catch fish with me if that was the case! I’ve seen it done by a guide in Key West and they totally destroyed their client. It was awful but also a huge lesson for me.

There are two types of shot here. One is Free-risers. These are fish that appear without warning, are at the surface for 1-2 seconds and gone. The other shot is tracking the babies and every once in a while an adult appears to breathe and disappears.

Technically the second is the easier shot because you know where and approximately when the fish will appear. However mentally this is the hard one for very many people. In the first case when the fish appears there is no time to think and the shot simply happens. However with the babies there is a lot of time to think before the shot happens. This is the one where many people struggle.

Zhongxiang likened babies to a penalty kick. So what we actually did was get a whistle and in practise I would blow the whistle and Zhongxiang would make the shot. Then back on the fish we repeated this whistle blowing shot when the adult appeared. It was MUCH improved!!

The key I think is that it must be automatic. There is you, the fly, two targets and nothing else. It really has to be trained that way too. Totally without conscious thought. That’s really what I’m driving at, how to make the transfer from practising the shot before they arrive to making the shot when here. The closer I can get them to this state before they arrive, the more likely they will be successful early on. And then it’s very much easier!

George quickly got it. Declan told me all day in the boat George said to himself “the shot must go in!” And so it did!! It helped very much that they both caught fish on their first day too.

Headspace is everything. I think the stubbornness is to not allow you head to prevent you from succeeding.

The same also applies to flycasting exams and competition. We need to turn that high pressure into something useful and in this case put the fly bang on the money. I agree with you that the challenge makes it fun. The excitement of making it happen and the satisfaction afterwards. That’s why I particularly love sight fishing!

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Found it:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ ... .2012.1339

[Paul Arden]

Thanks Vince. Which leads to the question do snakehead with babies really rise slower than free-risers or is that just our perception?

Something else I noticed is that it’s far more intense to fish than watch on movie. Despite having far wider peripheral vision with our eyes than a camera, our eyes focus right in on the target, ignoring everything else. Almost like being 2-3’ away from the action.

We have a few expressions here. Ronan says “make haste slowly” or “take your time to make time”. Richard says “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. Everyone starts off rushing the stroke. When you have more time everything becomes more deliberate.

Car crashes are another one that happens in slow motion. At least taking shots is more fun!

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Hi Paul

I’ve no idea about snakehead rise rates, I guess there’s a whole host of factors at play that you would have to measure to come to any sort of conclusion. I guess that’s difficult to do if you are fishing for them

Something else I noticed is that it’s far more intense to fish than watch on movie. Despite having far wider peripheral vision with our eyes than a camera, our eyes focus right in on the target, ignoring everything else. Almost like being 2-3’ away from the action.

I think that is called fovial vision that, allegedly Da Vinci was aware of it:

http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/ag.html

Peripheral vision works with less visual acuity and the trade off between the two types of vision is required because we have limited processing capabilities to deal with the amount of information that is available. I think that the brain fills in a lot of the gaps. Once you introduce moving targets as well, all sorts of clever stuff goes on. I may have posted this before but I find it interesting:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK10991/

I had a discussion with Mark about students that can’t track their line. We probably need a few more beers to get to the bottom of why that occurs.

Regards

Vince

[VGB]

We have a few expressions here. Ronan says “make haste slowly” or “take your time to make time”. Richard says “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. Everyone starts off rushing the stroke. When you have more time everything becomes more deliberate.

This is most likely to do with Fitts Law and the speed/accuracy of movement trade off. It’s a topic that has been well studied:



Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

Hi Vince,

Interesting links to vision but that’s not really what I meant. Take this photo of my motor:

C364BDD9-BFD6-48C9-BF64-D379B56B61AC.jpeg (133.91 KiB) Viewed 653 times

My personal full vision from corner to corner is this:

But my area of actual focus that I am looking at when I zoom in on the camera so that the sizes match between camera and naked eye placed side by side is this: (phone camera approx one foot in front of my eye)

83632EEF-DBB4-4714-9DA9-FE81AE817DD8.jpeg (145.03 KiB) Viewed 653 times

Cheers, Paul

[Paul Arden]

If we are to compare freeriser shots vs babies, freerisers would be like having a board of buttons that you have to press when one randomly lights up. Babies is like being told which button is going to light up and then you press it when it does. Most people are more accurate with free-risers. In fact many casts are completely blown with babies by the same anglers who can hit free-risers.

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

Hi Paul

I think that you have misunderstood the role of foveal vision. We see objects differently depending where they appear in the visual field. In the center of your eyesight objects look sharp and clear but those positioned outwards from the centre appear more blurred they appear. But the brain processes the information from the foveal and peripheral vision in a different way, such that it filters the display according to the task, the peripheral information is dumped from your conscious brain. However, if someone threw a ball at you while you were looking at the engine, you would still duck, the visual information has not been completely discarded.

I have seen it described as a useful evolutionary trait that allows the Hunter gatherer to stalk prey, or a particularly interesting turnip if they were veggies, without getting eaten by sabre tooth tigers. The foveal vision is lining up your target, whilst your peripheral vision and unconscious mind is the lookout

Regards

Vince

[Paul Arden]

Indeed it was a separate discussion. That was me thinking about why movies of fishing/eats are not as exciting as being there. And it’s partly because our eyes zoom in on the target. That’s very difficult to do with a camera when you get 2-3 eats/day.

Where peripheral vision applies is when looking for freerisers/babies because it’s the peripheral vision that first notices it, usually.

Heading down the lake

Incidentally if you have any questions for Nick Winkleman send them over. I’m going to do an email interview with him this week.

Cheers, Paul