#10 Getting Better at Casting, the Journey

 Working on your casting skills, Getting Better

  Getting better at casting is an ongoing journey, In earlier articles we have gone over some of the basics of learning to cast a fly rod. As you are learning to fly fish, there will be many times that frustration will raise its ugly head and make you want to throw the fly rod in the trash and just walk away. Let us not go that far just yet first look at some of the information I am going to share with you today. I am going to walk you through a few drills that may give you a new perspective on learning to cast a fly rod.

First off let me give you a little more information about myself. During my time as a Guide, I worked out of a fly shop in the town of Mammoth Lakes, Ca. As I was the “new” Guide with no seniority, I was tasked to be running the “Beginners Special.”

The Beginners Special trip was a 4-hour trip, where we provided you with rod and reel, (waders if needed), and you the client only needed to purchase 6 flies for the trip. Now to preface this if you recall in the Nineties Hollywood had just released a movie called:

 “A River Runs Through It’” starring Brad Pitt. The popularity of this movie was quite large, so every tourist who walked through the doors of our shop would say “can you teach me just like the movie”?

I would do two trips a day, and the trip was for up to 3 people at a time and was 4 hours long. There were days when I would loath the thought of another trip. In a truly short time, I realized that I needed to become a better instructor. So, I researched and found that though the Federation of Fly Fishing, or FFF (which is the governing body for Fly Fishing) I could train and receive upon completion of testing a certification as a Certified Casting Instructor.

This certification helped me to better understand the methods that could be used to become a better instructor as well as a better guide. After completing the course and being able to apply the techniques I learned daily, I was able to better teach my clients how to fly fish and make our time together learning to fly fish a more enjoyable experience for everyone.

One of the things I see quite often is people not being able to get the rod to load, or what we call an “open loop” We are going to cover a few terms that you will hear very often form this point forward.

The first term is what is referred to as the “loop” or “casting loop” This is the loop that is formed as the fly line is being cast. The line that comes from the tip of the fly rod is known as the bottom of the loop and the line above is known as the top loop. The loop should look like a sideways letter “U” as it goes through the air. If the “U” is small it is referred to as a “tight loop” if the loop is very wide, it is referred to as a “open loop”. The reason this loop is important is that the tighter the loop the better the transfer of power you will have. More power = more distance.

If you are casting with an “open loop” you have a poor transfer of power, and you will have trouble getting the line to go very far at all. Typically, what I see is when this happens, our natural response is to of course, “add more Power”. This is the exact opposite of what we need to do.

Let’s look at the diagram that gives a better idea of an “open loop” verses a tight or “closed loop”.

I’m going to refer to an earlier explanation I used in reference to the Archer and his bow. Imagine for a moment that you are watching the Archer shoot arrows effectively at his target. The arrow fly fast and true, as he puts another arrow on the string, pulls back on the string, while holding the bow firm with his arm straight and ridged, then just now he is releasing the arrow, the Archer allows his ridged arm to bend and relax as the arrow leaves the bow. Did this arrow fly the same as the previous arrow? What are your thoughts,? I believe you can see that the power did not transfer the same as the first arrow. The reason I’m illustrating this is that the bow works the same way that a fly rod does. Transfer of power is the key to an effective cast. As we talked about “loading the rod” this is how we can make the fly rod work for us.

Here is a quick drill that may help drive home this point we are trying to understand. We are going to call this drill, “Fling the paint”.

So, let’s for a moment use our imaginations and pretend we are holding a large paintbrush in our hand, make sure it is the type used for painting a house, not an oil painting on a canvas. Now while holding this large brush in our casting hand, let’s dip this brush is a bucket of paint. Go ahead, get a bunch of paint on your imaginary brush, get it? Alright now that you have paint on your brush, with your elbow at your side raise the brush to point up to the sky. You should be holding the brush the same way you hold a fly rod; your thumb should be on top of the brush, and your fingers wrapped around the handle, okay got it so far? Now we are going to fling or flick the brush so we can “fling “paint on the side of the barn. You should be starting in what is referred to as the “12 o’clock” position, elbow at your side and forearm is pointing straight up to the 12 o'clock position in reference to the hands of a clock. If you have a fly rod in your hand the rod would represent the hands of a clock. Therefore “12 O’clock” position.

Now back to the paint brush. To fling the paint off the brush do we just let our arm slowly fall to our side? Heck no! You want that paint to fly out in a majestic spray of color. So how did you do that? You started with your arm in the 12 o’clock position, and you accelerated your brush forward and you stopped your brush at or around the 10 o’clock position. If you did this right you got a great spatter on the wall. The brush did not stop at your waist, it stopped before your waist, “the 10 o’clock” position. This is what we refer to as smooth acceleration, and the hard stop. With the fly rod you will learn to do the same, “smooth application of power to a hard stop” By doing this your rod and line accelerate, and the “stop” is what makes the fly line “turn-over” or straighten out. This means that from the tip of your rod, the fly line is now perfectly straight out, either in front of you or behind you. There is no longer any loops, or wiggles, or bends in the line, it’s just straight.

The point illustrating is when you are casting your fly rod, the “stop” of the rod is one of key things you will need to master. If you stop the rod in a sharp or crisp fashion the fly line will form a tight loop, which is a clean transfer of power from the rod to the rod tip to the line, which will give you a nice turnover of the fly line good distance and good presentation. If the rod stops slowly, or softly, which means you did not stop the rod in a crisp or sharp manner, the line will have an open loop and you will have a weak transfer of power, just like the Archer who bends his arm, just as the arrow is released, and the line will fall out of the sky.

I have mentioned before, while you are learning to cast you should glance over your shoulder and watch the line as it travels both forward and back. This will give you a better understanding of what a proper loop and timing and stop should look like. I know there are a few of you more experienced people who will argue that form over function is key to casting, but I have learned over my time with Beginners Special, that a person will need to understand the function and then form will follow. I can hear the grumbles already as I’m writing this.

Let us put it all together let’s go outside and give it a go, shall we.? Hopefully, you are outside now with your fly rod. (With matching line weight for that rod) So, to begin make sure we have adequate room to cast, no trees bushes, or other nasties that want to grab your line. Let’s pull out from the reel about 25 ft. of fly line and shake it away from you. If you need to after shaking the line out, you can just back up till the fly line is straight out in front of your rod tip, your rod should be parallel to the ground, with your arm at your side. Now remember from our prior talk about picking up the “phone”? This is where you are going to pick up the phone, once the phone is to your ear, (you have said “hello lottery people”) and the fly line has flown past you the line is now straight, this is when you are going to “flick” the paint.

If you pick up the phone briskly, the fly line should smoothly fly past and behind you, as you watch the fly begin to straighten out, the line starts to straighten out, this is the moment when you are going to flick the paint brush. If your timing was right and you flicked the paintbrush correctly your result should be a smooth forward and back stroke, that you will be able to repeat with ease.

Try this and let me know what your results are. If you have any questions please feel free to give me a shout. Good luck and have fun.

Tight lines,

Gary