Teaching the double haul to a student who is not well coordinated

The horizontal method of teaching the haul (and of course, even the basic foundation stroke), I’ve been doing for at least 15 years. Taking it a step further, you can do it to great effect on a gymnasium floor. If you watch Gammel’s video, his “sliding line” on black visquene (plastic) was an idea he kinda got from me when I described my wintertime teaching in Anchorage the first time I lived up here, when we used to rent the high school gyms and have classes to break the cabin fever. I know of no better teaching trick than slide casting on a gym floor. The students “get it” immediately, and can gain control over their loops within 10 minutes. SLP is as easy as making the rod tip follow any one of the dozens of straight lines on the basketball courts. And the flyline follows and shoots in that same straight line. The beauty is that it all happens at about ¼ speed and is easily observed and absorbed by EVERYONE.

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Troy.... Thanks. Another trick for our bags !

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From Nial Logan (Australia):-

Hi Gordy and Group.

Quote from ol AL “Try to ensure that 'the haul is away from the rod, not the rod away from the line hand'. This is one of the big problems that new haulers have. Making the rod move away from the line hand just slides the rod up the line. Not the rod leg faster.”

Overcoming this fault and getting the students line hand in the optimum position is crucial to teaching effective hauling.

One method I have found useful is to break up the sequence into a number of steps roughly as follows:

1 Lay about thirty feet of line out of the rod tip straight behind the caster (the length of line depends on the students ability)

2 position the rod at the position of the completion of the backcast

3 make sure the line hand is in position

4 make the forward cast in a slightly off vertical plane and execute a single haul and release the line.

5 Once the exercise has been completed successfully a number of times, reverse the process and lay the line in front of the student make a backcast and haul

6 Next step is continual cast and add the “up” process into the sequence.

The advantage is that the student can see and feel the immediate effect of a correctly executed haul. Another advantage is that by doing the exercise this way, the student only has to think about a limited number of actions. It is also easy for the instructor to make corrections to the actions before the muscle memory kicks in.

Cheers

Nial

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"Hi guys. A bit of a weird one here. Student has given me permission to consult yall on this, but will not mention names etc.

I spent this morning teaching a progressing fly caster who desperatly wants to increase his distance. All went well improving his foundation stroke and casting with the rod hand only. Cantering the wrist we had him throwing overhead and rolls off his opposite shoulder, improved his timing, power application etc. Threw loops off different planes, cantering the rod out to the side and back again. I was impressed. Max distance with one hand was around 40 feet, but showing nice loops. All went well I felt. He has good control of his stroke.

untill...

We introduced the line hand. This is where he had told me he has trouble, due to a neurological problem resulting from working with chemicals etc in the past. Balance and coordination are a prob.

Therefore I concerntrated on ensuring his stroke was all good firstly, with no influence from the line hand.

Immediatly I observed there was no coordination between the hands. He simply could not move his line hand in concert with the rod, and introducing the double haul, much less the single haul was going to be tough... But - I dont give up easily!

Eventually I made progress with shooting line by keeping the line hand static throughout the cast, and really drilling "stopthenshoot" into him (one word), whereas he then opened "the switch" between forefinger and thumb and allowed line to shoot on the forward cast. Before this he simply could not time the shoot. Still a bit iffy, but he has trouble consistently coordinating his hands.

With good timing on the shoot, and if able to effectivly shoot line on the false cast I feel he would increase distance easily even without the haul.

He has the line speed in his foundation stroke to be able to pull off the haul, but I just couldnt get him to begin his haul at the correct time.

We pantomimed a lot, which made progress, and after realising we werent getting anywhere timing the 'downup' with rotation I concerntrated in beginning the haul and stroke at the same time. A more noticable cue IMO.

After a while we got this, but all was lost the moment we picked up the rod and line.

We improvised by using the rod only and pantomiming the haul, then progresses to casting a line with the rod hand only and pantomiming the haul with the line hand.

Dropping the casting plane and ground casting, we broke it down to only backcasts and only forward casts hauling into each. 'downup' and it seemed to work.

Prob was when we tried one full cycle, he just couldnt hit it right.

How do you all improve someones haul timing? Ive tried speech prompts, hauling for him, trying to delay the haul (he simply cant coordinate the haul with rotation etc, only really by beginning In time with the stroke)

The main prob was he would start the haul before beginning the stroke,

and we couldnt, no matter how we tried, delay this... It just happens.

What also stumps me is that he can time his stroke well, its just when we introduce the line hand things go awry.

Any advice would be appreciated, I really ran through my bag of tricks and was turning it over to see if anything else dropped out - Im giving him a freebie catchup session next week, and have sent him away with a retractible zinger to attach to the rod butt to practise with, Carlos styles :;):

.

Chris "

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2.) A different kind of, "hands-on" approach: You have him cast with the rod hand. As he does this, YOU MAKE THE HAUL. (I see you have tried this, so let's take it a few steps further.........)

4.) Now (providing he's comfortable with this) you do it again WITH HIS LINE HAND UPON YOURS.

Teach him to perform tension casts (water hauls) picking up increasing lengths of fly line from the water for a back cast. Start with him using no line hand haul. Then have him experiment using a single line haul to increase line speed and ease the work of the rod hand. This method can also be done in the reverse direction. It has the advantage of teaching only one haul at a time. Then do it with an off-horizontal rod plane, making repeated water hauls with a line hand haul in each direction. The water tension will likely help to give him the, "feel" of the exercise ..... and he can see what is going on. Once mastered, have him do it while false casting in air.

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From Jim Valle ..... Contact information for Ally Gowans. (At the Conclave, Ally gave us great instruction in his, "easy does it" style of Spey Casting.)

Here is the contact info for Ally Gowans for anyone that is interested in his Spey video or web site.

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