Using the thumb nail as a guide

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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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.

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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