The Board

The amount of advice you see around saying a newbie should have 30 feet of flyline line out side the tip when beginning, is staggering,
And mostly it's tied in with loading correctly

The amount suggesting starting with a shorter line, is minute....

Or I am just reading the wrong magazines and forums and groups on SoMe

Cheers
Lasse

Well that’s just staggering. How are you expected to catch fish at 20’? Anyway I’m not thinking about FB communities where everyone is an expert, mostly I was thinking about instructors. Reading the CI test would lead one to believe that you start flycasting teaching at 40’ (or whatever the length is). It would be much better in my view if it was actually laid out in the sequence you teach, using instructor methods. For me for beginners that means loop control exercises with a metre or two of flyline. That would be a better test because you could actually create an instructor system (of course agreeing on what that might be might present more than a small challenge!).

Cheers, Paul

Whenever I'm asked to show someone how to fly cast (from scratch), I start by giving them a rod with not even a reel on and tell them to flash it around in the air anyway they like and leave them to it for a couple of minutes. I then tell them to copy me and I'll do a simple and slow overhead cast with about 20' line out but still no line on theirs. That gets the very early surprise feelings out of the way. I think we forget how weird it is to hold a 9' fly rod for the first time. For a start it weighs absolutely nothing.

And to raise my own personal complaint when watching somebody demonstrate a cast, it would be really useful to know how much line the instructor has outside his rod tip when he's doing the cast - they never tells you that! They just get on explaining the mechanics.

Paul Arden wrote: ↑Sun Oct 24, 2021 3:53 pm It would be much better in my view if it was actually laid out in the sequence you teach, using instructor methods. For me for beginners that means loop control exercises with a metre or two of flyline. That would be a better test because you could actually create an instructor system (of course agreeing on what that might be might present more than a small challenge!).

If there was a formulaic, by committee, method of teaching, would it include baguettes and/or cucumbers? Imagine how dull things might be. Once I had attended a few UK Game Fairs, BFFIs, UK instructor organisation open days: I realised watching many casting demos is one of the dullest ways to spend time

Why do people become instructors?
About 12 years ago I decided I wanted to train to become a casting instructor, not because I had a burning desire to teach; simply I wanted to become a more skilled caster, and the various association syllabuses provided a framework

Along the way I did realise that (trying to) transfer my skills to others helped me to a better understanding of how things worked: I could not have developed that basic grasp of how things work without https://www.sexyloops.co.uk/theboard/

During an extended period of ill health, I allowed my certification to lapse. I couldn’t work for almost two years: paying FFF fees wasn’t the top of my list of household expenses

From time to time, I do wonder about getting back into instructing. I am about to move to the N Wales coast, I hear the odd lure angler say they fancy catching a Bass on a fly. I am hoping there will be room and interest there for me to set up something like the Manchester Casting Club I initiated a few years ago, and ran until it ran out of steam
I have never flyfished for Bass; I can’t see how that matters. Go me

Well let me turn that around Andrew, by taking the exams did you learn how to teach? Did it make you a better caster than teacher? Believe it or not I don’t think there are all that many different ways to teach fly casting. We have a number of exercises and so on. Making something interesting is normally down to the teacher and not the content. Some structure I think would be a good thing. One can always go off on a tangent and do something completely different, but having a structured syllabus would lead to better overall instruction in my view.

I don’t think I learned much at all about teaching from the certifications. What I learned came through by teaching and experimenting with it over time, much later. Having access to that information in the first place would have saved me a lot of time and saved all my early students from poor teaching from me!!! I’ve been teaching flycasting for 25 years and have been busy in that time, but I think I’ve only been doing a good worthy job of it in the past five years or so.

I think where I see the biggest problem is that teaching flycasting and guiding is separated. What I would like to see is professional guides all become certified fly casting coaches. As far as becoming better casters, I agree that many people do it for this reason but I personally think this is a diversion from what it is really about. I also think there are better ways to do both. It’s been interesting for me that I personally feel that I’ve become a much better casting instructor since I’ve been professionally guiding again. The two are really indivisible in my mind.

I’m sure there are lots of different opinions and views on this matter. Mine is just one of many. But when we are charging money I think we should be giving value.

Hey I hope your health is much better now!! I’ve always found teaching very rewarding in many ways. It can and should also be a lot of fun

Cheers, Paul

I am reading some books about teaching and coaching.
One of them is “the language of coaching” from Nick Winkelman.
In the preface he mentions the difference between programming (all the physical stuff like drills, exercises, movement) and coaching (the things a coach says to influence the physical stuff).
In my opinion there is far to little focus on the second part. Unlike you say Paul, coaching is a skill that can be teached/learned and does not necessarily mean 25 years of experience to master. That’s what I read
Unfortunatly teaching to teach/coach is hardly done as far as I know.

Cheers, Bart

BTW, the book is about teaching movement. So seems to be very relevant for our discipline.

Cheers, Bart

I agree!! These are the shortcomings for sure. Instructors should be given the skill sets to teach. And tested on them. It shouldn’t take 25 years of charging money to be a coach. I just went through a trail building workshop from an excellent teacher. I learned teaching tools from him that I will use. Teaching is teaching.

However there are two issues here. One is how you teach and the other is what you teach. There are very few people who can do the first effectively and also, very few people who can do the second to a high level. Until those two things are brought together, at the high level of each, then it’s never going to work.

Cheers, Paul

Paul Arden wrote: ↑Thu Oct 28, 2021 12:36 pm I just went through a trail building workshop from an excellent teacher. I learned teaching tools from him that I will use. Teaching is teaching.

Hi Paul

How many years do you think it would take you to become an effective trail building instructor, what would you need to get to that stage?

Regards
Vince

In my limited experience, identifying faults and coming up with practice drills is the easy part of instructing. The harder part is identifying the mental obstacles that students put in the way of learning. I suspect anyone that has taught can list the top 10 reasons from equipment to physiology and muscle memory that they have heard that stops the student being able to cast with muscle memory being top of the list.

Regards

Vince