Accuracy casting (Learning & teaching)

Walter & Group.........

Casting accuracy is important whether you are trying to place a dry fly in a particular spot in a trout feeding lane, presenting to a tailing permit on the flats with a crab fly or trying to hit a target during tournament casting on grass.

For instructors, being able to do it well is only one third the equation. Knowing how you did it and being able to teach it make up the other two thirds.

For candidates preparing for the MCCI exam, it is not enough to hit the targets perfectly, "on the nose".  The candidate must be able to describe how he/she did it, and be able to teach the techniques.  The casting must be flawless with good loops and line control. Allowances may be made for wind.  Having said that, however, the candidate should nontheless be ready to show wind compensation ("windage") techniques.

You may be asked questions such as :-

 Describe and demonstrate at least three things which should change when going from a nearby target to a distant one.

LET'S PAUSE RIGHT HERE AND ASK SOME OF YOU TO GO RIGHT AHEAD AND SEND YOUR ANSWERS TO THAT QUESTION.

1. __________________________     2. __________________________   3. ______________________________

 

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Larry Allen (MCCI) has given me permission to include a re-print of a letter he sent to John Breslin on tournament accuracy casting. There is a mountain of information here (I've taken the editor's liberty of italicizing a few points) :-

Dear John, 

 

First of all, thank you so much for stepping in to help us with the games again.  You , Don Simonson and Gordy Hill are BOG examples to others of dedication to the casting program.

 

As I promised when we were going through the 5 Weight Game I will attempt to list some of the accuracy tips that I have collected.  I became interested in the accuracy games over at Long Beach Casting Club about 3-4 years ago while taking the masters test from Joe Libeu and John Van Derhoof.  I later returned to Long Beach to watch a tournament and was “forced” to enter with borrowed equipment and “how to” instruction given as I played.  After this, I was hooked.

 

 

Target Casting Principles.

 

• Cast in a vertical plane so that the uncurl of the loop is into the target.  This is not to be confused with a parallel loop but that the parallel loop is in the vertical plane.  A parallel loop in an off vertical position will try to make varying degrees of a “curve”  or “tuck” cast. This would be true in even a slight deviation from the vertical.  At 50 feet, the slightest deviations will show dramatically.

 

• I think that all the good casters that I have watched triangulate the rod, their dominant eye and the target.  For me and other new casters that I watch, the tendency is to try to cast in front of your eye so that you “sight” the rod blank against the target like a gun sight.  This does not allow for depth perception.  Joan Wulff wrote about this in her “Fly-Casting Accuracy” book but I did not get it until I began target casting.  To get the good depth perception, hold the rod slightly off to the side from your eye (but still in the vertical plane) and then for the triangulation, point the reel exactly at the target.  The cast comes slightly from the outside to the inside and gives you the depth since you see the fly come in from the side.

 

• Tempo – Steve Rajeff suggests making the back cast slightly faster and then slow down for the front cast.  This lets you “feel” the tug of the uncurl in the back.  The perfect back cast lets the fly straighten and hover on the back cast.  This lets you start the front cast with a fully loaded rod.  A loaded rod will require fewer muscles (and less stroke length if this word still exists after Bruce and Bill get done?) to make the front cast and will be more accurate.

 

• Rod position and distance relationship.  For the close casts, the rod is inside the shoulder and in front of your body.  As the distance lengthens, you end up just even with or outside the shoulder as stroke length for you dictates.

 

• Right hand casters keep the right foot forward.  This helps eliminate any body twisting during the cast.  Most people do rotate their body around to the left to free the wrist movement.  If you stand square, then the right thumb restricts your wrist movement and stroke length.  If you are not far enough around to the left, you can tell because your forearm will get “frogged” muscles.  A good position will have a vertical rod with relaxed muscles during casting.  Chris Korich likes to feel that his cast is done with all large muscles of the shoulder and body.

 

• Equipment – you can see the dry fly equipment and leader formulas by going to the ACA web site. ( http://www.americancastingassoc.org/ )

 

Acquiring the target sequence.  This was given to me by John Napoli a former ACA  All American.

 

1.   Double haul to a spot that looks like it is over the target about waist high.

 

2.   Change to casting hand only and begin to “hover”  (the hover is a slightly overpowered front cast that makes the fly stay at the uncurl height just long enough to see its position above the target).  At this point you add or subtract line until you feel that you are over the targets front edge.

 

3.   Now lower the fly about a foot above the target (you would no longer hover as this would not be a smooth cast) and raise the back cast to maintain a 180 degree path front to back.  If you are not sure that you are parallel, then lay the fly down and see that the fly lands first.  If the line or leader lands before the fly, then you are low in the back cast plane. Tim Rajeff is always checking this relationship and teaches it in even his beginner classes.

 

4.  Cast slow enough that you can see the line uncurl and clearly see the fly. If the distance does not seem right, then start to hover again and do fine adjustments.

 

5.   I notice that most good casters look up at their front stop and watch the forward cast loop develop and then follow it down to the fly.  Watching over the target is almost impossible as the fly comes in to the window of vision for only a fraction of a second.

 

6.   Now that you have the distance and trajectory, next is to “cut the cake”.  This means get your cast in the exact middle of the target before you consider a lay down.

 

7.   The lay down.  Now you have the distance and the middle of the target picked out.  When you are ready to lay the fly down, you must not change anything other than a slight tilting of the casting plane.  You have been casting 1 foot high and when you change to the surface of the water, you must also change the plane in the back cast to be slightly higher.  John told me to imagine the fly landing 2” below the water surface.  This will allow for a firm lay down that is resistant to side winds but still allow the fly to float when it lands.  I must note that all of us that have to practice on grass, generally cast too fast and too hard. When we get to water, the fly sinks and we get a deduction.

 

 

Some other thoughts:  Last year when I cast the Northwest Regional, Steve Rajeff gave me much help.  He would walk by while I was casting and have me point the reel at the target.  This is a constant struggle for me to keep the reel from being out.  If you think about it, the reel pointing out sets up a little elliptical path of the rod tip and an uncurl that is not truly vertical and at the target.

 

Stroke Length.- we spent most of our casting life worried that there will be too much line for the amount of stroke that we are using.  Yes this causes tailing loops since the power of this short stroke + the weight of a longer line collapses the rod tip and makes a concave tip path.

 

When you start to target cast the problem is the opposite.  Too long of a stroke for the amount of line that is being used.  In target casting this is a terrible problem since the longer the stroke, the greater the chance for a tracking/timing error.  We are so concerned with the tailing loop that we all overkill the stroke length the other way for insurance.  Now I will spend the rest of my casting life trying to shorten my stroke (and still not tail).  Steve Rajeff worked with me on the Wet Fly game at the 55 foot target, changing my back stop from 2 o’clock to nearly 12 o’clock which felt like I would hit either me or the rod.  Now I am almost stopping straight up and the cast has improved.  You are able to use shorter strokes for a given length of line by being very parallel, getting max rod loading with better timing and tempo.  The efficient cast does not need as much stroke length as the inefficient cast.

 

 John, if you are interested in accuracy casting you could get better information from some of the long time ACA guys.  I have only written my personal experiences instruction from some of these people.  I am always amazed at the value of reading the great casting books again as I journey along my casting life.  I seem to pick up subtle gems with each step in skills.  This would be especially true of Joan Wulffs writings.  I think she has the technical part dialed in beyond my simple understanding and that I will be learning from her books for years to come.

 

 

Respectfully,

 

Larry Allen

 

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Comments: 

 

  Without trying to complicate the issue, I'd add one more thing which I learned from Joan Wulff and Floyd Franke.  That is the technique which they described as:  squeeze to a stop .   As Joan does this, she places the thumb nail of her casting hand directly in line with a close target.  As she taught us to do this, she glued blaze orange sections of tape to our thumb nails.  Worked fine !

 

Turning my cap around so the bill points back helped me when casting to close-in targets.

 

As Larry says, it's hard to beat Joan's books for learning accuracy casting.  Her : JOAN WULFF'S FLY-CASTING ACCURACY (C 1997, Lyons Press, ISBN: 1-55821-484-4  &  1-55821-465-S (pbk.) is suberb.  Even the cover is instructive!

 

Some of the things Larry teaches us are manifestations of style which help a great deal.  Some are essentials to the task.  Still others lie in the gray area in between.

 

In signing off,  Larry and I would like to have Group members send any accuracy casting tips or accuracy teaching techniques so we can all continue to learn from one another.

 

Gordy

 

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