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Walter & Group...
[GH] From Mark Ozog :
I just have to pipe in on the eye protection. I am an eye surgeon by weekday and a fly caster by weekend. I have personally taken care of a couple of eye injuries from hooks and they have all ended up with some form of disability. Gordy is right about the yarn fly as well; anything with enough velocity can cause an injury. Every eye injury I have ever seen could have been prevented by a simple pair of "Gordy Glasses" I will now put away my ophthalmologist soap box and thank all for the great input/help on this topic.
Mark Ozog
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[GH] Ernie French gives us the lowdown on how RJ (the youngster he described as having learned to fly fish at an early age)* did it. This message is loaded with information ! :
Gordy,
Rainy, windy day here so I can just wrap up my incomplete story about RJ. As I told you RJ Had gotten proficient at the spin rod and was a great spotter of fish. He was very in tune to what was going on around him. Of course he was seeing his dad with the fly rod and it was easy to see he was fascinated with it and recognized the he was a second class citizen using the spin.
I had started by casting the fly for him and letting him strip, hook and fight fish that way. Soon enough he he was picking up the rod and flailing away. With a little tuning he was able to get the fly out twenty feet and there is no better incentive for improving ones distance than seeing fish on the surface just outside your reach. That vision of reaching fish has been his guiding force in practice ever since. Casting for him is not an abstraction but a tool to success. He understands that casting is but one element of fishing and that catching fish is just one element of the total experience. I tell him we don’t cast to fish, we swim flies past fish. I look forward to seeing his improvement every year. His father takes him on several different trips a year so he is exposed to different fisheries. The secret to RJ’s success is simple “Time on the water”.
Ernie
* Teaching youngsters 2, message 2.
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[GH] Ernie,
I picked out several things from your message . I suspect each of these had a role in RJ's success:
- At attentive father to take him fishing. "His father takes him on several different trips a year...."
- (RJ)"recognized the he was a second class citizen using the spin. "
- The MEN "were using fly gear."
- "Seeing fish on the surface just out of reach".
- "That vision of reaching fish has been his guiding force in practice."
- "Casting for him is not an abstraction but a tool to success."
- “Time on the water”.
Gordy
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[GH] Sobering advice from Gary Eaton about working with children:
Gordy,
Paul's comments on physical contact seem a little stiff, however, the Boy Scouts have behavioral guidelines training required for all adults interacting with their youth. I do not teach kids absent the parent being on-site AND in sight. Sometimes, grabbing a kid by the arm before they create a dangerous situation, or reaching out to abort a fall, etc. needs to be available. My church does a background check and requires a release-to-investigate for each person working with youth. Smart essentials include:
- never be in a closed space or vehicle alone with youth.
- never take youngsters away from the designated location for the activity.
- always have 3-"cleared" adults for each five kids.
- parent involvement is a double-edged sword (find non-casting stuff for them to do like drinking water, etc).
- insurance probably does NOT cover inappropriate acts/illegal actions, only accidents.
- water creates an entirely new set of risks.
- when your gut tells you something is wrong, react to minimize risks, immediately.
- when you have concerns about an adult helper, exclude them or resign your spot.
Good cautionary Advice form Paul -
Gary Eaton, MCI
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[GH] Liam Duffy calls attention to just how fast that yarn fly may be traveling with the thought that this is why it can cause an injury even though light and soft :
Hi Gordy,
Not been in contact for some time (other things on my mind, as you know) but I suggest that somebody should time the fly/wool from the end of backcast to end of forward cast of a 50ft. cast and see how long it takes the wool to travel the 100ft plus I've done (very UNSCIENTIFICALLY) it with a digital stopwatch and realised how fast the wool was traveling and what the speed is when it contacts with a stationary object (the caster, probably his/her eye) anyone out there got the equipment to do this properly? my reckoning is 65-70 mph and when you think about is this way you realise the danger,
Best Regards,
Liam Duffy
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[GH] Liam,
Honest answer is that I don't really know in terms of MPH. I am aware that the speed of the fly leg of a loop has been measured at as much as 80 meters/second. That would place the loop speed at 40 m/s, or roughly, 125 feet/second.
As the leader loop unfurls, however, it's going a lot faster than that .... so even a bare leader striking a child at that point could cause injury..... especially to an eye!
When a caster happens to make a cast with the leader turning over rapidly to "crack the whip", the fly is moving fast enough to break the sound barrier.
I looked that up and found: Speed of sound in dry air, 20 degrees C = 343.2 meters/sec. or 1,126 ft./sec. or 768 miles per hour !
Gordy
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