MCI Study Group 2024

I’m left handed but the Nuns made you write with your right hand. Joe Brooks gave me my first casting lesson in the late 1940s—left town the next day I didn’t want to know why!

For some years I cast left hand-but as I began teaching casting I realized that a good instructors must posses three criteria and I think few do—that is not meant to be egotistical. The three requirements are

(1) You never display your casting knowledge—you share it.

(2) You must be able to cast with either hand. The best way for students to understand what the hand is doing is for the instructor to get behind, take their hand and make the correct strokes. A right hand instructor holding one who is left handed will not make the same smooth moves.

(3) A good instructor should be able to make many, many bad casts. It is here where I feel so many instructors who are caring and sincere fall down. They make statements simply not true. UNLESS YOU CAN MAKE A BAD CAST YOUR REALLY DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW IT’S MADE. If  student has a casting a fault and you show him you can cast with the same fault but then cast and eliminate it—he knows two things—what’s really wrong and you can show him how to correct it.

After a good many years I feel I have conformed to the above three.

Because I learned early to use either hand equally well casting it became a real asset to teaching and fishing.

 
Many years ago my lady asked me to flip our mattress a routine procedure in our marriage. She was on one side of the double bed and I was on the other. Spreading my arms I reached down grabbed the heavy mattress and flipped it over. She could hear from the other side as almost all of bicep muscle tore loose from the elbow. The doctor said I tore if off, which I knew. He knew me well and said if reattached it will be four months in a sling and three to four months of therapy. “Lefty, I watch you and you seem to be able to something as well with either hand. I would suggest you just let it heal and realize you’ll be limited in what you can do with the left one.”

 
I can cast as far with my left hand as I can with my right but it quickly develops a charley horse. During clinics and demos I often switch hands to show something.

You said that  I “have a style.” I don’t have a style. When fly fishing there is no one way to cast. If I’m up against a vertical wall of trees on a trout stream, I put the rod tip at the surface, my thumb is underneath the rod hand with the elbow elevated and I then can throw the fly line straight vertically as the cast ends the rod hand is turned and I direct the cast to the target. If I am in a confined are on a stream using a 9 foot rod. I will slide two feet of the rod behind me grasp the rod at the butt guide allowing me to fish a 7-foot rod in tight quarters and as the cast ends I’ll hold the rod by the handle to fish the fly. Two years ago I was with Ed Jaworowski on a Penn. mountain stream at a private club. There was a large trout rising along the far bank. The cast called for making two different casts (styles). Behind me was a tall fir tree with the lowest branches at least 10 feet from the ground. In front of me was a narrow vertical gap in the trees. A low side cast was made before the cast unrolled behind me I brought the rod to the vertical plane and delivered the forward cast. Since I wanted the leader to fall with slack I towered the vertical forward cast to obtain that slack. It fell two feet in front of the fish. As the fly neared he sucked it it and I had Ed net what they told me was the largest brown ever saw caught at the club. I don’t mean this to be bragging. I’m trying to emphasize there is no one way to cast and to catch that brown trout it required two separate “styles” of casting.

 
I have fished several times in New Guinea, more times in the Amazon and other wild places where there are fish. I have never seen a native cast like most instructors——————unless he was taught by a white man. Go to the Bahamas and spend time bonefishing with a local guide—most can throw the full fly line with little effort. That is because they have to buck the wind and there is nothing around that might  foul the cast and they all use what many call my style. NO. They are instinctively using a natural motion the way their forefathers or a New Guinea native would throw a spear.
My concept for teaching for many years is to teach what a person would do naturally—and I know it conflicts with the method that was developed centuries ago with a rod with no reel and short horsehair line on small stream and it’s much different today. We need a different approach. THERE IS NO SPORT EXCEPT FLY CASTING THAT SUGGESTS YOU USE ONLY YOUR ARM AND WRIST. Everyone uses their body to play ping-pong or throw a Frisbee.

 
I teach four principles, which I developed in the early 1970’s and published them in my saltwater book in the mid 1980s. I can send you those principles if you like and the three aids to casting that have worked wondrously well for my students. (WS-  Lefty did send me these and I will include them in another post).