PLEASE NOTE: In order to post on the Board you need to have registered. To register please email paul@sexyloops.com including your real name and username. Registration takes less than 24hrs, unless Paul is fishing deep in the jungle!

Casting Stroke

Moderators: Paul Arden, stesiik

User avatar
Paul Arden
Site Admin
Posts: 19528
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 11:20 am
Answers: 2
Location: Belum Rainforest
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#31

Post by Paul Arden »

"Creeping is unintentional forward movement of the hand prior to the forward stroke. The student doesn’t realize that they are doing it but they subconsciously move their hand forward before they apply the power on the forward cast. As a result of this unintended movement, it shortens their stroke length"
No disagreements from me. I would just add – “shortens their stroke length and/or casting arc”. It really depends on what happens next. If the caster intends to start the Casting Stroke with Drag/Translation then Creep will be translational. If the caster intends to start with rotation then Creep with be rotational. It’s an unintended and unaware motion prior to what is about to occur – it is very much a human trait. We think about what we are going to do, we anticipate it, and accidentally our body starts to do it as part of the preparation. Ultimately it becomes engrained. You see people do something similar at traffic lights!

Cheers, Paul
It's an exploration; bring a flyrod.

Flycasting Definitions
Tommy
Posts: 19
Joined: Sun Jul 05, 2020 9:57 am
Answers: 0
Location: Northern Michigan

Re: Casting Stroke

#32

Post by Tommy »

The point I was trying to make was that I don't think FFI is too interested in the strict adherence to their definitions as evidenced by CI and MCI demonstrating and explaining things and instructing me, a student and prospective CI, in a way that conflicts with the definition.
User avatar
Paul Arden
Site Admin
Posts: 19528
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 11:20 am
Answers: 2
Location: Belum Rainforest
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#33

Post by Paul Arden »

Same elsewhere. It’s surprising they don’t change them actually. Maybe in decade or two. It’s certainly very confusing for new instructors!

Cheers, Paul
It's an exploration; bring a flyrod.

Flycasting Definitions
Phil Blackmar
Posts: 492
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:57 am
Answers: 0
Location: Corpus Christi, TX USA
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#34

Post by Phil Blackmar »

Golf has moved from being taught by expert "players" to now being taught by "scientists" who use high tech devices to measure and breakdown motion. The transition from backswing to downswing is the second most important area of the golf swing. (Impact is number one). The transition is a dynamic motion which begins the sequence necessary to deliver the club with power while directing the club on a controlled path necessary for control. However, due to the analytical and compartmentalized nature of high tech analysis, you can get this for instruction:
transition.png
transition.png (25.04 KiB) Viewed 1152 times
Remove sequence, motion, and intent from the definition and you get a collection of positions.

This is the danger of having a "beginning" of the CS. Unless you're referring to a PU or just getting the line going, the CS TRANSITIONS from one stroke to the next. TRANSITIONING from one to the next stroke allows for body motion, such as stepping, weight shift and rotation to be included in the CS. It also then makes it easy to delineate between creep and drift. The intent to form a type of loop with a certain amount of force incorporates drag, drift, sweep and creep. Such a definition also embraces "styles" of casting so to avoid getting stuck in teaching a homogenized method.

Rotation is then the application of force or acceleration. Timing of acceleration within the CS is critical to achieve the desired loop. The duration and rate of acceleration can vary provided the culmination of acceleration and beginning of deceleration occurs at the proper time.

In golf, how can you teach the other areas of the swing without first understanding the "release" and impact. I feel the same for teaching casting. The student first must understand rotation and the timing of acceleration before moving to more dynamic aspects of the stroke. In this way, drift, drag and creep can all have positive or negative connotations.

The most important aspects of the cast then are timing, rhythm and tracking.

One other note. Would you rather have a student who wants to be "taught" or wants to "learn"?. The first will copy what you say while the second will use what you say as a guide to explore variations and empower understanding. If you prefer a student who wants to learn, then the teaching style needs to be more socratic than definitive. A socratic method employs questions leading the student on a shared path of discovery while the definitive is stuck in quantitative and compartmentalized thinking. It's a real problem, in my opinion, in golf instruction.

My two cents as a golf instructor learning to cast a fly.
User avatar
Paul Arden
Site Admin
Posts: 19528
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 11:20 am
Answers: 2
Location: Belum Rainforest
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#35

Post by Paul Arden »

There are a couple of really excellent points there, Phil. The first is I think if you were going to measure stuff then I don’t think you’d necessarily use either set of definitions for your structure. And depending on what you wanted to determine you might be constrained. Typical measurements are rotation rates through the entire stroke, measurements based on the distance the reel or stripping guide travels and so on.

Where we have a challenge in flycasting is there is a lot of semi passive stuff eg Drift. We intentionally don’t include this in the Casting Stroke which is usually related to Arc/angle change to generate tip path when actively accelerating the line. Stroke Length on the other hand usually relates to the whole package - includes body movement, which has often a different commencement to when we measure the start of Arc.

So we have a package within a package. It would be nice to more clearly distinguish Casting Stroke from Overall Stroke but English language and the common use of the terms or alternative terms doesn’t seem to allow it in a way that can be agreed!

With regards when things begin and end we intentionally don’t have hard boundaries in our set. Rather they are like two braided ropes spliced together. We generally teach in broad terms. Too wide Casting Arc too narrow etc. Determining that a casting arc need be exactly 8 degrees narrower has no practical teaching function. I don’t think we even need to know exactly when Sweep ends and the CS begins for teaching. Not precisely anyway.

Sounds like you have exactly the same issues in golf. How do you measure “feel”? :)

Cheers, Paul
It's an exploration; bring a flyrod.

Flycasting Definitions
User avatar
Paul Arden
Site Admin
Posts: 19528
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 11:20 am
Answers: 2
Location: Belum Rainforest
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#36

Post by Paul Arden »

Incidentally when teaching I use a mixture of both. I need to write something about this but just back at the boat now!

Cheers, Paul
It's an exploration; bring a flyrod.

Flycasting Definitions
Phil Blackmar
Posts: 492
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:57 am
Answers: 0
Location: Corpus Christi, TX USA
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#37

Post by Phil Blackmar »

Sounds like you have exactly the same issues in golf. How do you measure “feel”? :)

You can't measure feel because no one person can feel for another. Plus, feels change. However, using feels in teaching is critical for success. From Ben Hogans famous book Five Lessons"

"How then do you build a swing that you can depend on to repeat in all kinds of wind and weather, under all kinds of presses and pressure?......What I have learned I have learned by laborious trial and error, watching a good player do something that looked right to me, stumbling across something that felt right to me, experimenting with that something to see if it helped or hindered, adopting it if it helped, refining it sometimes, discarding it if it didn't help, sometimes discarding it later if it proved undependable in competition, experimenting continually with new ideas and old ideas and all manner of variations until I arrived at a set of fundamentals that appeared to me to be right because they accomplished a very definite purpose, a set of fundamentals which proved to me they were right because they stood up and produced under all kinds of pressure.”

Too often, in golf, changes are made to swings based simply on appearance without regard for function or in the framework as described by Hogan. In fly casting, say the student tends to throw too much from the side for maximizing distance, like me. The teacher can say "show me a vertical loop" " What do you feel?", "Do you feel the line shooting more effortlessly?" "What do you need to feel to replicate that loop?"

Plus, there is pressure when making that cast to tight spot, at a nice fish or hitting a golf shot, even if just doing it for fun. The golfer or angler who is in touch with the feel of a cast before actually making the cast has something to concentrate on which narrows focus, slows the mind and can help deal with the anxiety.

Over a campfire, this conversation could now go really deep. Several people in the group would probably fall asleep in their chairs at this point...LOL

Phil
User avatar
Paul Arden
Site Admin
Posts: 19528
Joined: Thu Jan 03, 2013 11:20 am
Answers: 2
Location: Belum Rainforest
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#38

Post by Paul Arden »

Hi Phil,

In FC there was an interesting phenomenon 30 years ago where an instructor had a “style” which he would then clone on his students. Even if that student had a serviceable Stroke in a different style. Something strange happened then. Instructors stopped teaching “style” and just started teaching “Essentials” and threw out all the cloning techniques.

For example. Elbow front “Accuracy” style vs Belgian/Lefty style. To say that you can use either according to how you are physically built I think is a misleading. Both are important to learn because each accomplishes certain respective criteria better than the other. Indeed learning a broad variety of techniques (/“styles”) I think is fundamental to your journey as a flycaster.

Cloning/pantomime/mirrored casting teaching is also a great tool to have! It’s one way how primates learn and it appears hardwired into us.

So to go back to your earlier post. I do believe that an instructor should give “things to try”/ideas/concepts to experiment with. However also I believe that you can also teach “rigid techniques” using cloning and get fast effective results. Call them “foundation strokes” if you like. And then develop personal feel/flair/style from there.

I suppose a question that comes up is how good does your student want to be? Does he/she fish 20 times/year and just wants a serviceable cast and less wind knots? Or does he/she want to be the best caster they can be? Or something inbetween? How much time are they prepared to devote to this? Are they going to become obsessed? :D Mostly I teach the obsessed! But I think it’s surprisingly niche. Even some instructors don’t appear to be obsessed!

I’m putting a video up on Tuesday that I think you might find useful :)

Cheers, Paul
It's an exploration; bring a flyrod.

Flycasting Definitions
Phil Blackmar
Posts: 492
Joined: Sun Oct 11, 2020 4:57 am
Answers: 0
Location: Corpus Christi, TX USA
Contact:

Re: Casting Stroke

#39

Post by Phil Blackmar »

Hey Paul-
So to go back to your earlier post. I do believe that an instructor should give “things to try”/ideas/concepts to experiment with. However also I believe that you can also teach “rigid techniques” using cloning and get fast effective results. Call them “foundation strokes” if you like. And then develop personal feel/flair/style from there.
I think that is the difference between wanting to be taught and wanting to learn. Wanting to learn is to try things and experiment to find those magical feels vs just being told what to do.
I suppose a question that comes up is how good does your student want to be? Does he/she fish 20 times/year and just wants a serviceable cast and less wind knots? Or does he/she want to be the best caster they can be? Or something inbetween? How much time are they prepared to devote to this? Are they going to become obsessed? :D Mostly I teach the obsessed! But I think it’s surprisingly niche. Even some instructors don’t appear to be obsessed!
I throw 2-3 times a day nearly every day if the weather is anywhere decent. Sometimes a session can last over an hour. Does that count as being obsessed? :p :p

I think I am figuring out what you told me to do a couple weeks back. I will send a video in the next couple days for your review. I'm not as consistent with it yet on both sides as I would like to be. When it feels "right", I feel the body pulling the fly, then the rod tip pulling the fly on a straight line, where it feel the top line will not collapse at the leader and will instead, stay "up", then the haul pulling the fly some more in the same way, then a little acceleration extension with the rod tip to finish it off. I am using more body rotation like you mentioned, as well....


Thanks
Phil
John Waters
Posts: 2147
Joined: Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:16 pm
Answers: 0

Re: Casting Stroke

#40

Post by John Waters »

The two things you seek to feel are stretch and resistance. All rod translation and rotation is a result of body rotation.

John
Post Reply

Return to “Flycasting”