The Board

It’s very difficult maybe impossible to remove completely. It is possible to aim below the horizontal with the 170 backcast. When dealing with a strong tailwind my first backcast is Belgian before switching to the vertical plane for the next two.

If you can’t throw a low backcast and you want a high forward for distance then it’s next to impossible to remove the dangle. One thing that you can try is drifting up with the rod butt before the beginning of the forward cast. It helps but still won’t completely remove it.

The next option of course is to use a shorter head.

Cheers, Paul

Sorry guys and girls, the video quality is too poor to anything useful. It's getting a lot worse after posting it to youtube. Don't know what's happening and what encoding they apply :/

On my longer carries I notice a "ticking" of the fly on the surface and what has helped unless coincidentally, is as already mentioned, simultaneously lifting the hand while opening the wrist as paul teaches drift. Rotary drift has appeared to be more beneficial in my casting developments than simply translating the hand back ( continuation of the stroke) so currently my stroke is stop,open the wrist, and up not back.

clayed21085 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2019 5:52 pm On my longer carries I notice a "ticking" of the fly on the surface and what has helped unless coincidentally, is as already mentioned, simultaneously lifting the hand while opening the wrist as paul teaches drift. Rotary drift has appeared to be more beneficial in my casting developments than simply translating the hand back ( continuation of the stroke) so currently my stroke is stop,open the wrist, and up not back.

Thanks clayed21085, I always drift back and not up. That might be a solution. I'll certainly give it a shot

It’s difficult. Because if you drift up too much you are in a weaker position later when it comes to delivery. For me it’s always been a bit of a compromise.

I remember Rick talking about a small oval movement he uses for his hand path during the forward stroke, back when I first started learning the 170.

I think that with the stiffer rods we are now using that our casting arc can be slightly narrower - this is going to help. Something else you can play with is some rotation during the slide (forward drift). This will help stop the tip rising when you apply the power - but then you have sacrificed some of your arc..

Cheers, Paul

John and Paul, among others, were discussing in the SLP thread the problem of a dangle with a straight hand path. In messing around with distance again, I have developed a dangle when throwing a long cast with a 9 weight and slightly weighted fly. It is totally unsightly and pisses me off to no end to see the line go out in such a manner.

John-how do you avoid a dangle with a straight hand path with a long cast?

My "get rid of the dangle" practice session yesterday yielded the following:

I can avoid a dangle by doing one of the following:

-a very slow smooth beginning to the forward stroke void of sudden acceleration until the ROD TIP reaches it's apex at 12 o'clock.
-Similar to the first, early smooth rotation followed by aggressive translation once the rod tip is at or near its apex.
-The swoop.

It appears to me that if the rod tip moves upward during rapid acceleration, you will either get a tail or a dangle.


I am off base? Are there other fixes or components of this disease?

Thank you
Phil
-

This is the problem, Phil:
I believe that the only way to truly avoid the dangle is to either put the line and rod into a different position at the end of the backcast, or to place it in different trajectory, which will both unfortunately mean most probably a shorter carry.

The more we can reposition the line and straighten the relative paths the better. The longer the carry the more problematic this becomes.

Cheers, Paul

Phil,

Might not be your delivery stroke.

Describe your flyline, leader, and fly.

Also, is your back cast close to vertical?

Have you watched how the fly behaves at the end of the back cast?

Sometimes, its not the stroke, but how everything sets up right before you start it.

Gary

Phil Blackmar wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 3:31 pm
John-how do you avoid a dangle with a straight hand path with a long cast?

My "get rid of the dangle" practice session yesterday yielded the following:

I can avoid a dangle by doing one of the following:

-a very slow smooth beginning to the forward stroke void of sudden acceleration until the ROD TIP reaches it's apex at 12 o'clock.
-Similar to the first, early smooth rotation followed by aggressive translation once the rod tip is at or near its apex.
-The swoop.

It appears to me that if the rod tip moves upward during rapid acceleration, you will either get a tail or a dangle.


I am off base? Are there other fixes or components of this disease?

Thank you
Phil
-

Hi Phil,

I think you can minimise it but as the line length you are false casting increases, it is difficult to eradicate. To minimise the dangle I would lower the trajectory of the backcast to horizontal or below and increase the line speed in the backcast loop. Both can be achieved with a straight line hand path. The key to a straight line hand path on the forward cast is the path of the elbow. Just as the elbow is the driver in short line casting, so the path of the elbow is to hand path. As the elbow and hand move toward the shoulder on the forward delivery cast, the shoulder abducts whilst it accelerates the elbow and hand. I focus on what is happening behind the shoulder, and see the in-front of the shoulder movement as predominantly internal shoulder rotation followthrough. Whole lot of biomechanical terms in that but, what it all boils down to, as mentioned by Lasse, Bernd and Paul, is line speed and trajectory on the backcast. The no-stop backcast gives the best chance of achieving those objectives. Increasing line on the backcast is far more challenging than on the forward cast, but nevertheless, the same biomechanical principles apply to hand speed and hand path.

If you use the shoulder and elbow to drive the hand path and tip path on the forward cast, you will not get a tail. You may get a dangle but in my view they are two separate things.

Spent many years of training time on "the swoop." movement. I no longer consider it a driver of performance.

John

Paul Arden wrote: ↑Mon Jan 15, 2024 7:03 pm This is the problem, Phil:

IMG_6480.jpeg

I believe that the only way to truly avoid the dangle is to either put the line and rod into a different position at the end of the backcast, or to place it in different trajectory, which will both unfortunately mean most probably a shorter carry.

The more we can reposition the line and straighten the relative paths the better. The longer the carry the more problematic this becomes.

Cheers, Paul

I'm afraid to admit this, but I understand your artwork. I'm not sure what that says about me....

Cheers
Phil