“The fundamental problem with the casting model based on rod load is that nobody knows what a proper rod load is for a given cast; I don’t know of anybody able to look at the bend in a rod during a casting stroke, and tell if it is a proper load or not. Not only different rods will show different amounts of bend for the same cast, even every angler can get different amounts of rod bend for the same cast and casting distance, depending on their individual styles.”
The Technocrat
“If fly casting is about the rod loading/unloading, and therefore impulsing the line by transferring its potential energy to it… shouldn’t the Bow and Arrow cast be the distance technique of choice?”
The Technocrat
At the moment I am preparing a mentoring session for two anglers that are getting ready for two different casting certification tests. Writing is the best way I know of putting my ideas in order, so I have started this succinct list. A work in progress, probably. Comments are welcome.
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I was trying hard to follow exactly what I had been reading on all those books. The roll cast was an easy one —authors said— in fact easier than an overhead cast because you get rid of the backcast part. However, when practicing it my results were awful, to say the least.
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In the first article of this series we studied how the setting of a V-loop doesn’t put any load in the rod. The momentum of the line travelling backward is transferred to the water, without affecting the rod tip. In many spey casting technical works we find another purported source for that mythical rod pre-loading: the rod motion from the tilted sideways position at the end of the sweep into the more vertical position suitable for starting the forward cast, a maneouver also known as circling-up. A quote from the internet about this circling up and its consequences puts things in perspective:
Continue readingAlways shrouded in the mist of mystery, when popular casting mechanics focuses on spey issues it seems to enter the realms of magic.
It doesn’t help that the various styles of spey casting seem to compete in presenting their respective approaches as if they were different techniques, instead of just adaptions to some particular conditions.
Fortunately spey is spey, and physics is physics, and the latter governs the phenomena involved in the art of throwing a line with a pole in exactly the same way, whatever the brand, length or taper of your rod and line, and the waters and fish you are after, be it in Scandinavia or in the Pacific North West.
Nowhere in the world of sending a fly out there with a line you can find rod load being more glorified than in the spey casting scene. Everything seems to gravitate around that. If the cast is good it is because the rod was properly loaded. If it went wrong… well, sure it is due to the rod not having enough load or unloading prematurely. Continue reading
