Teaching concepts revisited

[VGB]

I’ve thought long about how I use analogies, which I love, and discovered I use them astonishingly rarely…haven’t worked out why yet. We mix this up, just as Graeme says, to meet the specific needs of our casters…that’s what I try to do anyway.

They are difficult to craft unless you and the student has a shared experience. I was being taught using a musical beat once but my technical knowledge is limited to putting a needle on a record and singing badly. I suspect if I tried to explain something based on aircraft handling qualities, I’d get a series of blank looks back. It might get easier over time as you develop a relationship with the student but your points of contact are often quite limited.

Regards

Vince

[Bernd Ziesche]

Thanks Nils for your answer again. I have put a question in the physics forum. I hope amyone can help.
Regards
Bernd

[John Waters]

Hi John

For many of them, it’s because they have no choice, and there’s often less fish there because it gets battered.

Sure, a percentage will be fishing small streams with hawthorn hedge behind, but the majority will use a near vertical stroke with no haul, a single haul or a double haul and will try and cover as much water as possible by casting to their maximum distance for some part of their fishing day.

Mark has described the scene that you see all over the country, open bc, punched fc to get the distance or to deal with wind. Some sort of haul might be going on but the line hand is a passenger even then. You can do fault diagnosis from your armchair, it’s so common. You could ask yourself why this scenario is so prevalent?

I have not seen much reference to either instructional or performance cues in the fly fishing or competition casting literature.

I’m scratching my head to think of any fly casting literature that deals with learning, there’s rain forests of paper showing you how to perform every casting variation known to man.

Regards

Vince

Hi Vince,

There is another reason that basic stroke pattern is the predominant stroke used by fly fishers all over the world, albeit many of us could use it more effectively and acknowledging the many constraints they encounter in a day's fishing, it is the most biomechanically effective way to cast.

John

[John Waters]

Thanks Mark, Vince, Paul and Graeme for the cues you use in casting instruction and thanks to Nils for your initial post.

John

[NM]

I’ve been thinking about writing down Cues, Analogies and Drills that I use so I can collect them all together. Or in fact just going through students notes would do it!

That would be most useful Paul.

Vince, Mark
We have had lengthy and discussions on internal versus external cues and teaching lessons from other areas. Most interesting and very useful, (I have learned a lot), but I think it is time to make it more concrete and fly casting related. Yes, watching the loop is useful. It provides useful feedback both to the caster and the instructor, but one has to be able to correctly interpret that feedback, relate what you are seeing to your/the caster’s movement (pattern), and come up with ways to adjust that movement pattern to fix any casting errors that the loop you observe may reveal. It would be most helpful if you could share some concrete examples external cues that you find helpful and contrast those with internal cues that may typically be used by others to address those same issues. To make things more concrete, you may consider a fly fisher coming to you to help them fix:
• A nasty tailing FC loop.
• Some wide-open front and back cast loops, maybe due to “windshield casting.”
• Some downward directed, wide-open BC loops.
The fly fisher may be a light-line small-stream trout angler, a heavy-tackle saltwater angler that need to cast a bit further than the trout angler, maybe with larger and heavier flies. I would be interesting also to learn whether there are any differences on how you would approach those two.

Best,

Nils

[Stoatstail50]

but one has to be able to correctly interpret that feedback, relate what you are seeing to your/the caster’s movement (pattern), and come up with ways to adjust that movement pattern to fix any casting errors that the loop you observe may reveal.

This is correct but the main issue for an instructor is to create an environment where it is the caster who solves the problem for themselves. This involves the instructor setting objectives and designing drills to lead the caster to a solution.

Let’s assume an instructor understands that the main cause of a tail is a busted application of force. For external cues, we have options, the line, the rod, the reel, a tape on the ground, lines on a pitch, a target, two targets, all of these things or just some of them. My standard drill for managing force application is a cross body loop unroll, loop doesn’t unroll. This is cued off the final loop shape down a tape. Once the objective is explained or demonstrated to the caster, that’s the instructor as an external cue, you can leave them to work on it with a bit of encouragement and reinforcement.

Windscreen wipering is cued from the line shape and/or the rod. Same with wide BC loops.

All three of these issues are made much less likely with some preliminary priming and all of them can be addressed exclusively with external cues.

None of these problems need an internal cue. However the standard internal focus is on wrists, forearm positioning, elbow flexion and extension.

[John Waters]

Hi Nils,

I really enjoyed the videos between Paul and Nick about adding distance to your casts. It would be interesting to see a list of cues that would apply to that instructional transition.

John

[Paul Arden]

Hi Nils,

Unless it’s an on stream guiding situation I wouldn’t fix those issues with cues, but instead using drills and exercises. I’ll post a bunch of external cues I use later. First I’m going to have a quick breakfast and head out fishing!

Cheers, Paul

[VGB]

There is another reason that basic stroke pattern is the predominant stroke used by fly fishers all over the world, albeit many of us could use it more effectively and acknowledging the many constraints they encounter in a day's fishing, it is the most biomechanically effective way to cast.

Hi John

I’ve no idea how you would measure the efficiency of the casting system, it’s notoriously difficult as I have no doubt you are aware. I can understand how energy efficiency fits into a day’s fishing, I always sleep well after a day out. Using the pattern more effectively is certainly a goal of instruction but it cannot be intuitive, otherwise you would see it being performed a lot better than it is. In my opinion, it’s because the learning process is generally ignored in favour of cloned expert patterns, the students never learn how to self correct, they are following a serial set of fixed instructions in a highly variable environment and the performance routinely breaks down.

Regards

Vince

[Bernd Ziesche]

To make things more concrete, you may consider a fly fisher coming to you to help them fix:
• A nasty tailing FC loop.
• Some wide-open front and back cast loops, maybe due to “windshield casting.”
• Some downward directed, wide-open BC loops.
The fly fisher may be a light-line small-stream trout angler, a heavy-tackle saltwater angler that need to cast a bit further than the trout angler, maybe with larger and heavier flies. I would be interesting also to learn whether there are any differences on how you would approach those two.

Hi Nils,
will it be a max one hour online teaching session, a short 10 minutes face to face teaching on a fly fishing show or a full day lesson in my place?
Will it be cold or not? Will there be rain?
Will it be a youngster or an older student?
Will it be a man or woman?
I don't want to make it any complicated, but all that has quite impact to how I would teach.
That's exactly the issue with teaching exams. You can't easily test for all the things becoming very relevant in real life teaching.
Let me offer a few examples.
2 days ago it was very cold and lots of snow was around our feet. I told my student to bring waders, but he forgot. He also didn't listen, when I recommended to put on the extra jacket he had in his car. So we were in the snow with our feet, facing a "nice" icy wind and after 5 minutes he agreed to pick up his extra jacket and gloves.
In such a situation I will hand over the rod directly and have him cast. Otherwise he gets cold in no time and that's killing any proper teaching. If it's a woman I'd probably go back home and pick up a neoprene waders for her. Women are mostly freezing much quicker.
Now let's assume I have a full day. I'd run thru different short exercises each built to learn one key essential at the time. In the end the issues will automatically be gone. Grip, stance will be set up in one minute and during the exercises I will add up. I will have made a quick video for capturing the individual issues in the start. That's very helpful in long terms aside I will give the information what was missing in each exercise being the one hitting the cause.
If we would have a whole day in summer I may start with a bit more of an introduction to some basics like stances, grips, the big three and giving an overview whats coming in the day.
If I would have been on a show and 10min are already long, I'd offer to have the student put his rod hand on mine. I'd make him feel how he casts and then how I'd like him to cast. He most probably will do much better straight away. If he still drops the rod too much, I'd exolain or I may step a bit closer to his desired stop position in rod plane. Students dont hit you with the rod. I'd have a talk about what we improved. In addition I'd offer to stay in contact via phone.
If it's a 1 hour online lesson, I'd most probably directly mark the causes and explain how to correct. This will be demonstrating my movements compared to his and putting it in words.
In the end my questions will be:
1. Can he properly perform?
2. Does he understand pre and post?
3. Can he take the understanding home in a form to recheck?

Not sure that was what you were after.
Regards
Bernd