HISTORY /Teaching - feed-back / Teaching words

Hi Gordy,

Some History ? see also picture. The overhead was the overhand and the rest were underhand!

May Fly Fishing (1889) ? an extract from Fishing Trout and Salmon by H Cholmondeley Pennell.

The first cast to learn is the ordinary overhanded one, in which the hand holding the rod is raised so as to carry the rod backwards a short distance beyond the perpendicular, feeling the line all the time, and, after a decided pause, just as the weight of the line commences to bend the rod-top backwards, the hand is brought forward and down again with a slightly increased velocity. The motion of the hand throughout is smooth and without jerk, and should describe a slight curve - the object of this curve being to prevent the line when travelling backwards from coming in contact with the rod, or the line itself when coming forward. If the fly is dry the cast on the water may be at once completed, but if not, the backward and forward motion must be repeated a sufficient number of times to thoroughly free the hackles and wings of the fly from moisture. At times some difficulty is found in drying a May- fly sufficiently. In this case one of two things has probably happened: either the fly is thoroughly sodden, when it is as well to put up a new one, and leave the other to dry in your, hat, after coaxing the wings, &c., into position with your fingers; or the wings have got turned down and caught under the bend of the hook; when the fly will neither dry rapidly nor float well. As the hand comes forward the rod-point must be lowered, and the line delivered at a level of about a yard above the water. The hand is then slightly checked and the fly falls lightly and without splash. The checking serves a two-fold purpose: firstly, causing the fly to land on the surface without disturbance, and secondly, delivering it with plenty of slack line, which, as shown later on, will prevent or retard its dragging.

If it is necessary to make a very long cast, the hand when travelling back must be raised above the level of the head, so as to lift the line as high as possible behind. This is called the steeple cast. It may be laid down as, an axiom that the distance an angler can cast is limited by the length of line he can keep, in the air behind, with the addition of a few yards he can slide from the hand while delivering the: fly; hence the advantage of steepling when trying to make an extra long throw. It is also necessary to steeple when there is a bank or bushes immediately behind the angler; even with very long grass it is often useful.

If the wind is dead in the face of the fisherman he must use a somewhat shorter length of gut, and follow the previous instructions for casting, up to the point of delivering the fly; but when the arm attains the angle of 45° with the plane of the water it must be well extended, the knuckles turned down, and a cut made downwards and towards the body, the elbow being at the same time raised and the rod-point carried down to the level of the water. If accurately timed, this back motion acts as a check, and the result is that the line is extended in the teeth of the wind, the fly travelling out straight, and falling lightly and without disturbance. This is called the downward cut. For fishing against a very light wind, or across any breeze short of half a gale, no style of casting is to be compared with the underhanded or horizontal cast. As may be inferred from its name, it is a cast made underhanded or with the rod held in a horizontal position. The movements are. precisely similar to those of the overhanded cast, except that the rod is in a horizontal instead of a vertical position, and the motion of it is in a direction parallel to the surface of the water instead. of at right angles to it, as in the case of the overhanded cast.

The line should be returned under and delivered over the rod. To give a fair indication of the difference of position of the angler, his rod and line, the accompanying plate (page 367), shows in outline their relative positions, one in the overhanded and the other in the underhanded cast. There are many good reasons why the underhanded cast should at all times, where practicable, be used by the angler who desires to be successful. With it he can throw against a moderate wind or across a strong one, and his fly will in the majority of cases land on the water cocked, or floating with its wings up in the natural position. This last is a very essential and important point when dealing with shy fish, and with no fly and in no style of angling to so great a degree as with the May-fly. Besides these advantages, there is another which, if possible, is even of greater consequence than either, viz that with the horizontal. cast the fisherman himself will work more easily keeping quite low down, and, whether returning, casting, or drying the fly, neither his rod nor its shadow is ever nearly so visible to, and consequently likely to scare, the fish. There are only two difficulties to overcome when commencing to learn the underhanded cast. The first is to get over the cramp caused by the alteration in position of the hand and the strain on a set of muscles which are scarcely used at all with the overhanded cast. The second, that from the fact of the rod-point; and therefore the fly, travelling along the arc of a circle of which the hand is the centre, and the plane of which is parallel to the plane of the water, it is far more difficult to place the fly accurately over the rising fish than with the ordinary overhanded cast, when it is directed in a straight line down on to it. Both of these difficulties are, however, overcome by practice and perseverance, and having once mastered this cast, the angler will never fail to use it in preference to any other. It should also be noted that with this cast a fly can be placed under overhanging boughs, or up under a bridge, where it would be an utter impossibility to do so by any other means.

If the beginner finds that, without being himself able to specify the cause of his non-success, he is not progressing, and if he cannot get a friend who can cast to tell him of his faults, as a general rule, and in all styles of casting, he may safely infer that he is getting into the habit of either using too much force, or of casting and returning too quickly very possibly he may be falling into both these errors.

Best wishes,

Ally Gowans

See my web sites http://www.letsflyfish.com and http://www.flyfish-scotland.com

2009 Spey Casting and Salmon Fishing Schools at The Kenmore Hotel April 17/19 and June 12/14. Trout fly fishing and fly casting school "Tackling Trout" at The Kenmore Hotel May 15/16/17, 2009. See my web sites for more details of schools.

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From: Gordy Hill [mailto:masterstudygroup@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 11 March 2009 16:26
To: Alastair Gowans
Subject: "Line plane"- Other terms / Hearing vs. Understanding

Alastair & Group...

Let's have some more answers to my request for advice on roll cast practice. G.

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Food for thought on "LINE PLANE" and casting terminology in general from Ally Gowans. My comments in his text in bold blue italics :

Hi Gordy,

Here is another challenge, what is line plane? What line plane is; is far from plain! How do you describe/measure line plane? Is it measured in degrees form horizontal, vertical, rod axis or what? A line can and usually does travel in more than one plane so which is used to describe the cast. The rod and line can travel in different planes, quite deliberately during casting so the rod plane and line plane need not be the same.

In the fly casting literature and with in the field teaching, the use of various "planes" has cause much confusion during the past few years. This is why I brought up this subject . In my humble opinion, I must agree with you completely that there really is no such thing ... and that it cannot be measured as a geometric plane at all. Your right.... PLANE ISN'T PLAIN !

Even with your preceeding paragraph, you use the term "rod plane" after both of us had agreed not so long ago, that my use of that term was not as accurate as the term "casting plane" which you preferred. I also agree that the "rod plane" ("casting plane") would not be the same as the "line plane" ! I think a better term for "rod plane" might well be "rod orientation".... in fact when I taught "rod plane", I defined it as the ORIENTATION of the rod from vertical to horizontal on either side of the caster ..... thus relating to the ground. G.

All the terms you list below I will have used during teaching. My normal approach with beginners is to have them understand that the same casting technique may be used whilst altering rod planes in any number of steps from horizontal right to horizontal left. The ups and downs between back and front, the 180deg principle I refer to as tilt eg. Tilt into the wind ? one rule that covers any wind component along the casting direction (the other wind rule is ?cast on the downwind side? for across body wind components). Taking these together they quickly learn how to adjust for any conditions.

Good way to put it ! ( I do like that word, TILT.) When related to the ground or water surface, one can easily measure the "tilt", "trajectory", or "launch angle" as a simple angle ..... NOT a plane. G.

Let's start with the words to describe "LINE PLANE" and see what word or word combo. might be best when teaching fly casting to non scientific students. I'll start with a couple of suggestions:

# TRAJECTORY.

# LAUNCH ANGLE.

# AIM IT HIGH / AIM IT LOW.

# GO FOR THE SKY / GO FOR THE WATER.

# KEEP A STRAIGHT LINE BETWEEN YOUR BACK CAST AND YOUR FORWARD CAST.

# CAST BACK AND UP.

(I'll bet some of you can come up with some better simple terms.)

There is another quandary that comes to mind. What is an overhead cast? Would Lefty?s favoured style be called an overhead cast? If not what name do we give to a back and forth (two cast) casting technique? There may answers in history!

Ally.... this is another term easily challenged. Historically, I think this term may have been used to differentiate between horizontal casting with the rod parallel to the ground. Other terms crept in perforce, since not all casts were made with the rod vertical or horizontal ..... in fact almost all casts are made with the rod oriented somewhere inbetween ..... so we got terms like "off vertical" and "off horizontal". This gets even more problematical as we view casts critically and note that when fishing, most casts are made with the fly rod oriented a bit differently between the back cast and the forward cast. This is best seen when standing behind the caster.

The term "overhead casting" has also been used to differentiate the two cast (back cast- forward cast) technique from the family of eliptical casts. Same witht he term, "straight line casting"

In short, I think the term "overhead cast" might well be scrapped despite that it has rolled off the tongues of casting instructors and authors for years. "Straight line casting" may be a bit more accurate, but only in lieu of a better term. Unfortunately, scrapping a well entrenched term would not be easy. Going with a well informed interpretation of it may be the way to go. G.

Best wishes,

Ally Gowans

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Hearing vs. Understanding as we Teach

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Jim Valle sent us this message from Kirk Eberhard's Spey Study Group :-

Gordy and Group,

As you know I have joined a spey study group as I work on my THCI (Kirk Eberhard) , interesting to see how much of your study group ends up over there so here are a couple interesting and important points re communication and learning from that group that I thought would be appreciated by the Masters Study Group. Especially Chuck Easterling?s observations?.

Hope this helps,

Jim V

Group,

Good words from Chuck, my thoughts in red.

Kirk

-------Original Message-------

From: charles easterling

Date: 3/5/2009 9:46:58 AM

To: kirk eberhard

Subject: Re: Instantly Forgotten/Rarely Understood

Hi Kirk,

This is an interesting question. My suspicion is that the written and spoken word often are not very good tools for communicating what the instructor is trying to convey. Agree

I would suggest that frequently we think our "words" are conveying our thoughts and we "think" the person to whom we are speaking is understanding what we are saying but often that is not the case. True words! In order to avoid embarassment students/others often respond with an afirmitive nod even if they don't understand/don't have a clue.

A good idea to "test", have students/others reiterate/repeat your instructions. Veteran instructor Ron Lauzon asks students "what did I just say", in a nice way of course.Ron points out that students/ people hear/digest/perceive identical instructions in amazingly different ways! "What did I just say?"

A few years ago I had an opportunity to spend some time with Al Kyte and we went out to a ballfield and videoed my casting. At the ballfield Al made some observations about my mechanics and I thought I understood what Al was saying. When we got back to my house, Al and I sat down and looked at the video with Al again going over what he said at the ballfield. Wow! It was an eye opener being able to hear Al's comments while seeing the video gave me a much better understanding of what he was saying. That has stayed with me and now whenever I give a lesson I try and take a video camera along to help insure the student understands what I am saying.

Along these same lines, several years ago Bruce Richards and I were out casting and Bruce was explaining something to me which I thought I grasped. Bruce then said something along the lines of, "Here, put your hand on top of mine and feel what I am doing." Again, what he was saying became much clearer. I think these two examples gave me a much better idea about how I learn and they have certainly influeneced how I teach. Excellent points, thanks for sharing.

Kirk

Chuck