Thanks for the reference to Mel Krieger’s book. I saw it while looking through the Amazon list but it seemed to be more for fresh water types. I will order it. BUT- my confusion is the relationship of the hand and rod tip, not from side to side on either a horizontal or vertical cast, or something in between, but up and down. It seems to me you can’t have both a “level” rod tip and a level hand. Either the hand has to move up and down (or in and out) to adjust to the rod tip flex (seems pretty hard to do) or the hand stays relatively level and the rod tip flexes up and down. If I do your suggestion of taking a flexible rod along a wall, the hand has to come way inside at the apex of the casting arc. The same would be true if I used the ceiling instead of a wall, the hand would drop at the apex and then go back up again in the forward part of the cast after the apex. That seems to me to indicate the hand should move up and down in the cast to try to keep the rod tip relatively level. Is this the objective? Lefty seems to say the objective is to keep the hand relatively level. I like Lefty’s descriptions as it seems more appropriate to our long distance casting but can’t put the descriptions together. Also, I am confused on the description of the direction (up and down) of the line at the end of the “power snap” or whatever you choose to call it. In other words, the direction of the loop. Does the line travel in the direction of the rod tip at the end of the flex forward or toward the center of the flex, or another way of trying to describe it, does it move toward the position of the rod tip after the flex or towards the direction of the rod tip after it recovers to the approximate center of the arc? You would think I could read four books, cast for thirty years and figure it out…. But. Also thanks for not commenting on my intellectual acumen.
Laurence