Whole line out!

[Paul Arden]

That’s great Barry! I suspect the next thing to work through will be straightness and tracking. Everything from that point onwards has to be built around casting straight (unless you are practising presentation casts of course!).

Totally agree with you there Matt. I just put structure around that. Build the straight cast, hitting targets. Then do the same thing in different rod planes (30/60/90 degrees) on both shoulders. And then work through the same exercise using different loop planes. That should be done hitting targets from say 20’-50’ in 5’ intervals. So for me it all comes back to this root cast.

I’ve never really found much use for the pendulum cast, but low tight side casts I’ve found very useful indeed. This is probably because I can throw tight fast loops off the side, but I find this far more challenging inverted and I just don’t have the same sort of control under trees.

For me I find the bow and arrow more useful than the pendulum but I’m sure it’s an awesome skill to have and I’ll spend some more time on developing my skills this summer.

Cheers, Paul

[barrysthlm]

Boisker - I’ll be looking for tips for good spots around Nailsworth when I eventually get back over for a holiday!

[barrysthlm]

Just a quick update in case anyone finds my adventures with MED interesting. Since many of you are instructors you might find something useful in my struggles.

- First the good news. I bought a new tape so that I can measure my casts in a normal field and it turns out I had the wrong measurements for the football pitch, so all my casts are now 5 1/2 feet longer than I thought. That puts my MED average at 95 and my best at 101. This is in completely still conditions, there hasn’t been any real wind here when I’ve been practicing.

- Everything that can be wrong with my cast is wrong. I’m having a real ‘bubbles under wallpaper’ experience. Every time I fix one problem new ones pop up in some other aspect. It’s very frustrating.
- I have improved on most of my tracking issues, but still my back casts veer out to the right when I get tired or too excited.
- The haul now feels integrated and is actually controlling the cast. I have dialed way back on power and don’t feel the need to put it back in
- On my final forward cast I regularly lose the plot and start to fast, or rotate through the whole stroke, or creep. Or all 3. The greater the carry the more likely this is to happen.
- I can carry 72 feet fairly comfortably. More than 80 and my back cast goes all squiggly. I’m not shooting 50%...
- Cross winds really mess with me in a way they don’t with sea trout lines. I’m not sure if this is normal or if my stroke is lacking somehow.
- In completely still conditions I can get the fly line completely straight but some nights can’t turn the leader over well.
- There seems to be differences in conditions when it is still - some nights I can cast further than others. Can air pressure or humidity or temperature affect casts drastically? Like 5 feet?
- the biggest difference is that I have drastically loosened my grip on the cork. This is what made the haul work properly with the rest of the cast.
- Accuracy training actually takes the pressure off and lets me focus on playing with loop shape and rotation. Practicing roll casts on the grass helps with this as well (all the water here is frozen, so grass is all I’ve got)
- Going back to my sea trout line and casting it feels like a rocket launcher, the line speed is mental. I still cast further with this than the MED.

Happy St Patrick’s Day!

/Barry

[Graeme H]

G'day Barry,

I'm glad it's coming together for you, even if fixing one fault exposes another. That's a great place to be.

- On my final forward cast I regularly lose the plot and start to fast, or rotate through the whole stroke, or creep. Or all 3. The greater the carry the more likely this is to happen.
/Barry

For this one, I tell my students to concentrate on the second last cast. How does it feel? Where does the rod stop?

Then I tell them to repeat that cast as their final one but do nothing different except let the line in your hand go free. Keep the rod in the same place, get the same feeling. Do not put any extra effort into the final cast.

Once they do this, they get the same distance (or more) with no loss of form or loop shape. Only later do I get them to try a fraction harder on the final cast.

Cheers,
Graeme

[Paul Arden]

Sounds good Barry. Thanks for the update!

When working on things take them in sequence that they occur, which is usually ground up.

I wouldn’t worry about the distance (I know that sounds strange) instead I would play with carry and working on shaping loops with your longest carry that you can control.

When distance competing I launch on the third forward cast. When working on carry I carry a fixed length for 30 seconds or even a minute. They are separate. There is no pressure when practising carry. As Graeme says you can just try releasing a long carry to see how far it goes.

The launch sequence however is a different skill set. When you get your carry into the mid 80s then I think it’s time to focus on that aspect. But really the carry is the fun bit. Shaping loops on a long carry for me that’s the best fly casting feeling. The launch is a separate thing altogether.

Yep even in dead air conditions can be 5 or even 10’ difference. It makes it a little bit complicated and you can’t judge improvements day by day but by the overall trend.

On the carry are you fully straightening your haul? There is a backcast grip with the palm on top of the rod that places the butt tucked into the forearm. This is essential. When you start to carry into the 80s the stop should feel “Stopless”. And then it all about “late”, straight and line speed.

When I work on my distance cast before an event. For the first 3 weeks I just work on carry, being smooth and shaping loops. It’s only the last couple of weeks that I’ll work on the launch.

Incidentally crosswinds will blow the legs out of parallel. Just tilt the casting plane slightly off the vertical to try to keep the rod and loop planes aligned.

Cheers, Paul

[James9118]

Hi Barry,

I'd recommend making a 60ft shooting head from an old #5 line. Use this to practice carry - this will fix you to about 75ft measured from the tip of the line to the hauling hand (i.e. the head outside the tip with enough backing to enable you to haul without hitting the fly-line into the tip ring). The advantage in doing this is you avoid the temptation to go over the carry all the time to the point that it fails (you can put a knot in the shooting line to confirm a measured carry point that you can feel in your hand if that helps). Then practice this carry until it feels easy and looks good. Once it feels easy you can graft some extra fly-line at the back of the head to take the length up to ~65ft, which will take the carry up to ~80ft. Again, practice this until it feels easy....and so on.

Cheers, James

[easterncaster]

Adding to James' great shooting head idea:

Cut the head to length so that you can hold the fly line just above the shooting line connection. This will give you good feel as you haul (textural as well through the guides) and still accomplishes the fixed line idea that James suggested. No need to add a knot to the shooting line because you will have the connection knot as marker. In other words, fly line will be inside the guides. Make sure to take in account your haul length when figuring length of head to be trimmed.

.02
Craig

[Boisker]

Boisker - I’ll be looking for tips for good spots around Nailsworth when I eventually get back over for a holiday!

I had to google where Nailsworth was
Not an area I know or fished.... but must be plenty of river fishing within an hour or so

[Mangrove Cuckoo]

Years back, SA and Lefty Kreh made a fly line designed for beginners that had a "tell-bump" molded onto the line at the back of the front taper to give the novice a clue. Some anglers that I knew who fished primarily at night adopted that idea and put a tiny bump of epoxy on their fly lines. That way, when they stripped their lines all the way back to the boat, they could tell where they were at. It worked both coming in, and when working the line back out when false casting. As everyone knows, even the slightest abrasion on the line is easily detected, so the bump was made as small as humanly possible... it could still easily be detected but did not inhibit the cast.

Now days, I would assume it could be done much easier with UV cure epoxy, and could possibly be removed and replaced easier too.

Would that not work for a carry indicator?

And you would not have to chop up a fly line!

[James9118]

Putting a bump on the line to mark a carry point is a great idea. I only chop up old fly lines by the way, ones where the running line is getting down to the core already. So it's more a case of getting some extra use out of them rather than putting them straight in the bin.

Cheers, James