Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2008 8:47
AM
Subject: Using the thumb nail as a
guide
Tony & Group...
Comments and question from Troy Miller on the
use of the thumb nail as a guide (as he responds to our last few messages
):-
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Excellent
message, Gordy.
Have
you ever heard someone teach by asking their student to concentrate on the
motion and position of their thumbnail before? To focus on that
throughout the stroke from start to finish? The reason I ask is that
I've been teaching this as one of MY fundamentals of proper casting for more
than 20 years. Virtually every student of mine has been advised to
concentrate on his (or my) thumbnail, and I ask them to do some very
specific things with their thumbnails. I've never seen or heard of
anyone else preaching about the thumbnail prior to the last couple years of
Lefty's teaching. I do know that when I spent an hour with Lefty about 9
or 10 years ago, we discussed a number of our teaching concepts and I believe
I told him that it was one of my foundation building blocks in communicating
with my students.
Do you know
of any writing, video, or other instruction advising students to really pay
attention to the thumbnail while casting, from a historical perspective?
I have not read or watched very much at all. I may be the only casting
instructor that's never picked up Jason's book, nor watched or read Mel or
Joan's work, or anyone else -- with the exception of Joe Humphreys tuition at
Penn State, and later Lefty. I've read a little of his
teaching (the small paperback "Longer Fly Casting") and watched
"Lessons with Lefty" a couple times before donating it to a student. I'm
pretty well the opposite of Al Crise in that I haven't read and followed the
teaching of other instructors, although I'm aware "through the grapevine"
what most of them are known for teaching. Teaching "the thumbnail"
may not be new or novel, I just hadn't come across others using it before, and
kinda considered it one of my own strange/unique
concepts.
TAM
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At first,
Troy wanted to keep this just between the two of us. I pointed out to
him that I thought it was a really good teaching question from which we all
could learn. He gave permission to share. Here is my
answer:-
Troy...
A resounding YES !
Joan Wulff, in our Instructor's Course which she gave years ago, started
placing orange finger cots on our thumbs with a black spot over the thumb
nail.
One of her instructor-students came up with the idea of using
blaze-orange stick-on tabs for the thumb nail. This worked better than
the cloth finger cots which kept sliding off.
She used this method as one of her teaching tricks for accuracy
casting.
Lefty has used the thumb nail as one of his teaching tools for years, as
you know.
The fact that you independantly thought of this puts you right up in the
big league !
I had just finished typing today's message for the Group and pressed SEND
when I read this one .
Great stuff !
Gordy
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Lefty comes in with this comment in response
to our discussions on making sure the wrist doesn't twist and the thumb nail
should point directly away from the first target on the back cast
:-
Gordy--- I lay a fly line or rope on the grass and ask the student to
throw the backcast so the fly line lies along side the one on the grass. The
nice thing about using a rope or fly line, if the students stops after each
backcast they have a clear, visible impression of what they did right or
wrong.
Thanks for letting me sit in on the site--lots of fun reading what the
guys say.
All the
Best,
Lefty
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Lefty ... You showed me that trick
years ago. Others have taken a page from you and have done the
same. Horizontal casting along a straight line such as that taught rope
is one of the best teaching tricks I ever learned.
Gordy
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