To Infinity, And Beyond

No, nothing wrong, I’m still here. I’m just suffering from my usual winter blues and general lack of enthusiasm that occur’s every winter when I get out of the casting loop. Not long now though, the BFCC have their first meeting of the year at the Spring Show at Newark in a months time and I will get myself re-enthused for the coming year.

 An interesting comment on a forum has me thinking. It was suggested by a well-known person that the way to learn about fly casting is to go for distance as the first objective and go for subtlety second. Because the person is well-respected he didn’t get the usual crap about not needing to cast far thrown back at him (which I suspect I would have had if I had written it, but then I’m neither well know, or respected).

 He has a very valid point, namely, you will learn more about fly casting in your  months of effort to achieve a benchmark 100′ than you ever would if you were happy to phaf around at a more modest distance (which I did, for many years). Once you can consistently cast 100′  with a five or six weight  you are entitled to call yourself a good caster, and you will be. You will certainly be better than the vast majority. Now that rise fifty feet away is easy and that fish moving about eighty feet away is just about to find out he is not as safe as he thinks he is!  There is nothing quite like the buzz of a fish taking your fly at distance.

 I know it’s a bit late for New Year resolutions but make one this year. Give yourself twelve months of pure distance casting and next year you won’t even have to think about it. You will be stalking the bank putting your fly anywhere from here to there and not worrying about it.

 Just one word of warning though, it can become addictive.

Publish And Be Damned

I have alluded to it in a previous post but isn’t the World Wide Web a wonderful thing…. or is it?

 Everything is so accelerated. I very much doubt that we actually discover anything new about flycasting that hasn’t been discovered, and re discovered, several times over the last hundred years or so, although technology has allowed us to see things that would not have been possible a few years ago. The difference is that instead of writing a letter and receiving a reply a month later and then replying to maybe one or two other correspondents  we can now discuss it and (possibly) come to a conclusion in hours. This is done under public gaze, any one of whom can jump in whenever they like and add their contribution. Whereas, those thinkers pre internet days had to sit and cogitate and ponder to work out their particular theories. Plus, they had to put it down on paper in a way that they hoped the person they were writing to would understand.

 Of course they must have reached conclusions, the difference is it may have taken years and none of us ever got to hear them unless they published a book (come on, be honest, how many of you go and buy a book on fly casting? I don’t) and the book would have to cover all aspects of flycasting not just one little aspect! imagine the amount of letters tooing and froing while the author checks out thisnthat. Now all you have to do is pose a question on a forum and hey presto there’s your answer….or is it?

 I don’t know if it happens in other languages, I hope so,  but written English is a pain in the arse. One word may have two or three different meanings, put another word in front or behind and the meaning can change again. A whole sentence can be open to any number of interpretations, if you are not carefull. I have been pulled up any number of times for my apparent mis-use of one word. In fact some people delight in deliberately mis understanding (is that actually possible?) something I have written. I know this doesn’t just happen to me, I’m not paranoid. So, those people who wrote ‘how to’ books in the past were either very brave, or egocentric, with skins as thick as a rhino. They put into print their own ideas and theories, published, and were damned. They didn’t realise that in a few years they were liable to have bits put up on the web, possibly out of context, to be, sometimes ripped shreds, sometimes defended and, occasionally, rediscovered. 

 Yep, the web is a wonderful thing. Just think, in a couple of hundred years time someone may drag this blog out of the ether and wonder, what the hell has this got to do with fly casting? What is flycasting? Come to that what is a fish?

 Normal service will be resumed soon.

Happy New Year

I hope you all had a nice Christmas. Mine was unusually chilled, someone put a bottle of red in the fridge by mistake so I thought the best thing to do was warm it up…. by drinking it. Apparently I then went on to sample the Rose, but I don’t remember that bit, well, I was very, very drunk at the time. I know it may seem a bit light-weight, for most of you a bottle is just warming up but it constitutes about a quarter of my yearly alcohol intake. Mind you it was the best sleep I have had for a while.

 I had a Vosseller DC4 and spare spool, which are all lined  and ready for action. I have picked a rod I am not bothered if I break or not, I have had it for years but have hardly used it. The fly box is gradually filling up thanks to Gary, who kindly sent me some samples to copy, and the material supplier who provided me with lots of lovely stuff to tie them with. Sad to say I now know I need a fair bit more to tie some of the patterns (whats new). The fly box was a present as well.

 I am undecided whether to go to the local river, which is a bit high and coloured, for Pike, or, lose my cherry and have a pop at a Pouting, I will see what the weather looks like Friday and make up my mind then.

 Apart from filling my swaffing box I am tying for the FF&FT fly tying comp. It’s a new format this year and so the flies will decide whether we go into div’s 1,2 or 3. Magnus Angus has chosen a particularly awkward fly so that he can sort the wheat from the chaff so I fully expect to be firmly rooted in div 3. I am also waiting to hear the final number of flies needed for the Sexyloops swap, it looks as if I will need to tie another half a dozen or so to make up my 40 then all I have to do is label them all and get them in the post.

 I don’t know about you but I am not too sad to see the end of 2009, it was one of those years that are best forgotten as far as I am concerned…except for the good bits, which, I have to admit there were a few.

 Roll on 2010,

 Happy New Year.

Conclusion

Take two, I have one draught am not happy with so I will try again!

 What is a loaded rod? A bent one. If it ain’t bent it ain’t loaded. If the rod has a bend in it has to be having an effect on the line, ie, you have acquired it and started it moving in the direction of the cast. The rod does not need to have much apparent bend in it to have quite a substantial load. Think about how you put maximum pressure on a running fish, you lower the tip so that the butt sections come into play. Thats where the power of a rod is.

 The initial translation may not have much, if any, rotation going on. The rod may just be translated with the tip only slightly up from horizontal, it doesn’t matter, if the rod is bent it is pulling the line. Translation is not at a constant speed, it is accelerated in the same way as any other part of the stroke, it’s just not magnified by rotation…yet.

 For those of us who are not as supple as we used to be rotation will start while the rod hand is still behind our shoulder and once it starts it has to be a progressively increasing acceleration to maintain or even increase rod loading and allow leverage. It’s difficult to say when the rod is at maximum load. It’s easy to say it’s when it is at maximum bend, or chord length is at its minimum. The problem is that the rod is changing angle rapidly so load will show up in different parts of the rod as the rod rotates so minimum chord length or maximum bend may not actually be maximum load. I believe the rod loads to its maximum quite soon after rotation starts and that allows the line to be levered forward. Perceived wisdom is that leverage accounts for about 70% of linespeed, the rest is made up of the haul (10 to 15%) and PE ( the energy released by the unloading rod, 15 to 20%). It therefore stands to reason that the longer the tip path can be accelerated then the faster tip speed, and therefore linespeed, will be at RSP (rod straight position).

 So in a nutshell I am saying that the longer you rotate (and accelerate) the faster your potential linespeed will be.

 Having said all that I still have the dilemma that working on Late Rotation has helped improve my distance. Why? I believe that without realising it I have had to work at progressively rapid  acceleration to try to achieve late rotation and that that is the key, not Late Rotation as such.

The Dark Side

mechanical work is the amount of energy transferred by a force acting through a distance.

 This came up a while ago in one of the more technical discussions on ‘loops and the concept had been sort of making the rounds to various parts of my brain for quite a while now, you know, one of those things that just pop into your head when you least expect it and you spend a few moments mulling it over before something else comes along to take its place.

 It’s the force through distance bit that got me thinking. What force are we applying during translation? If you read the previous post then you will see that for a substantial part of  translation we are not applying any force to the line at all, or the real late rotators aren’t anyway. Don’t forget we are talking pure distance here, not ‘normal’ casting.

 To my mind the secret of distance casting is the ability to control acceleration. The ability to feed power in progressively rapidly. I do mean feed, it’s not wham bam thank you mam. Mel Kreiger used to describe it as whuuUMP and that’s actually a very good description.

 It occurred to me that I should really be accelerating the line as well as the rod, why waste line acceleration time by just accelerating the rod, that would be the equivalent of wheel spin. What we really want is traction, not smoking tyre’s. By the time the guy with wheel spin has finally got some traction the guy who didn’t spin his wheels is halfway down the straight.

 Of course this argument might just be me making excuses for my inability to perform a long horizontal translation, but, what if I have not actually ever been a Late Rotator?  I must have, and still be, doing something right because I would not be too ashamed to cast distance with the best in the world. I might not win but I wouldn’t necessarily come last either.

 I intend to write about the mechanics of rod loading next but I need a bit of time to get it sorted in my mind first….. so you might have a long wait.

The Jedi version

One of the main problems, as I see it, with ‘proper’ late rotation is the grip. You need to change it three times during a complete cycle. To start the backcast the grip needs to be palm forward, even finger on top. During the backcast pause the hand needs to rotate clockwise (if you are right-handed) and open up so that the rod is held very loosely in an open hand. The thumb becomes a fulcrum. The butt is not actually gripped, it’s held in position by just the weight of the rod and tension in the line. Hold your hand in front of you and describe a 3 or 4” circle, look through the C shape you have now made and swivel the thumb to point at your face. That’s the grip you use through 90% of the translation. To keep the rod horizontal through this phase you need to allow the wrist to move. You will probably find it easier if the rod is canted over a bit but, unfortunately, if you do that you lose distance, the best distance is from a near vertical rod. When your hand gets to a point just passed your head the wrist can no longer bend back any more and you will start a natural rotation. Rotation proper is a combination of squeezing your hand to a proper thumb on top grip and a powerful rotation of the wrist, this is where you haul as well. The combination of the push/pull squeeze ( you push with your thumb and pull with the fingers) and the wrist rotation/haul are what gives you the massive increase in linespeed.

 All the above is theoretical as far as I am concerned, it’s what I have strived, and failed, to achieve for the last several years. I have only seen it done properly by three or four people.

One other thing that needs to be cleared up is that the translation phase with the C grip only accelerates the rod  horizontally towards the waiting hauling hand. Think about it. Nothing the rod does at this stage can have any effect on the line, it is purely sliding down the line. Drag is a misnomer, it should better be called slide. Drag suggests line tension and slack removal. This is absolutely not the case. What you are doing however is accelerating the rod in the direction of the forward cast so that when you do start to acquire the line the rod is already moving at a substantial speed therefore the rod will load faster and deeper than if you has rotated from a static start. Translation should be looked at as a rolling start, you are already on the move before you cross the start line.

 Couple all the above with perfect timing and power applied through the legs and body and you too can become an Uber caster.

 As I said in my previous post I have now moved to the Dark Side, more of which later.

Feel The Force

I have outed myself as a bit of a fraud on Sexyloops, well perhaps fraud is a bit strong, misguided might be a better word.

 In the distance casting game ‘Late Rotation’ has been the Holy Grail for years and I have strived for years to attain it. However, in the back of my mind I always knew I had never achieved it despite the devises I used to perform a pseudo version of it. Proper late rotation involves the rod staying horizontal until the hand has translated from right back to right forward, if you include body movement that’s a translation of six or seven feet, if you include a forward stride that can become up to ten feet with rotation coming in the last six inches. Well, I could never get that. I used to kid myself that my rotation happened in the last couple of feet, which wasn’t bad, I could live with that. Of course when I reviewed a clip of my casting it always appeared that I was actually rotating for a much longer period but I would put that down to filming the wrong cast. Ok the early rotation may be slight, and, it did lead to an explosive finish but it wasn’t a Hartmann or Ardenesque stroke, just an approximation of one.

 In my heart of heart’s I knew this and spent endless hours trying to get my body to flow fluidly from back to front with the classic horizontal rod. I even considered taking up Yoga or Pilates to try and supple my body up a bit. I only considered it for a while though, being intrinsically lazy I just never got round to it.

 I recently came to terms with my inability to perform the drag properly and moved to the Dark Side instead. I am going to be the one that whispers that Late Rotation is bunkum. You have all been hoodwinked, deceived into thinking you are somehow not worthy, you are a lesser caster because you cannot perform this complicated manoeuver without having to resort to slight of hand. No, I am here to lead you down a different path, the path of enlightenment, the path that doesn’t lead you to an inferiority complex, the path of fact, not fiction. The truth, it’s out there somewhere.

E=MC2, Discuss

Whisper it, but I do occasionally use forums other than Sexyloops and I find there is quite a transition required. ‘Loops is stuffed full of casting geeks who will question something you have written, especially if you have made the mistake of being a bit lazy by not going into the details you have assumed everyone will take as read. Often they will just plain disagree, and say why. This, I believe is why Sexyloops is probably the premier fly casting site in the world. If someone offers a different opinion you listen, and hopefully learn.

 On other forums, and I mean absolutely no disrespect, this just isn’t the case. If someone asks a casting question the answers vary enormously, some good and some not so good. The problem lies in the fact that the person who asked the question may or may not be an experienced caster and may or may not be able to sort the wheat from the chaff. They may take the short and sweet (and often wrong) reply and just end up more frustrated.

 Writing about specific aspects of casting is difficult at the best of times and doubly so when you don’t know how good or bad the caster is you are answering. (Try it, tell me how to cast into the wind. I want stance, grip, casting plane, casting angle, power application, hauling, leader length, loop shape, linespeed and anything else you can think of. Keep it concise).

 I usually try and be reasonably brief, this often leads to more questions so I elaborate, only to be then told by some numpty that I have over complicated it and there is no need for all this jibber jabber.

 I will tell you what the problem is; casting is like the laws of physics, ‘every action has an equal and opposite reaction’ and I like to point out just what these reactions might be and how they can be countered or even used to advantage but using the written word is not the best way to do it. Something I could show and explain in less than thirty seconds takes a hundred time longer to write, and probably twice as long to write it in such a way that there is no ambiguity and no room for misunderstanding. That’s not taking into account I might be wrong in the first place.

 Please be aware that if I answer any question it is will be correct to the best of my knowledge, has been sweated over and revised several times and I have not assumed you know one end of a rod from the other (unless I know you do).

And Now For Something Completely Different

I tie flies. Not particularly well I admit, but well enough to catch fish nevertheless.

 I have tied pretty well from when I started fly-fishing. I think I thought it was going to save me money! That’s a laugh. I probably have enough hooks and materials to last me a several lifetimes the only problem is they are never the right hooks or materials I need for a particular fly. I have just put in an order for another hundred quids worth because I want to tie up some flies for next years adventure into the world of salt and, of course, most of the stuff I already have just doesn’t fit the bill.

 I have tied for the annual Sexyloops fly swap every year since it started and this years swap was the best yet. I send forty scruffy looking things and get forty fabulous looking flies back. Result. My only problem, no, one of the problems, is that I can’t bring myself to actually fish with them. For some reason I treasure the damn things and hoard them away somewhere safe just to bring them out occasionally and drool over them. The other problem is guilt. Guilt that I have sent some pretty mediocre flies in and received works of art back. It doesn’t seem to worry Paul Arden though, he just tag’s the word ‘variant’ onto whatever he ties and no-one can say if it is supposed to be what he say’s it is or not. Pretty damn clever if you ask me. I have just started tying for next years swap, and I’m feeling a tinge of guilt already.

 About four years ago I entered the Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Magazine annual tying competition for the first time. What an eye opener that was. Part of the requirement is that you send in three identical flies. I have a problem tying one identical fly let alone three. You end up tying about twenty flies (not including the trial ones) and then sorting through them to find some that look pretty similar, then you photograph them and get them up on the computer and then compare them again…and again… and again. Make your choice, pack them carefully, post them off. Three sets in three months. Magnus Angus put’s a jaundiced eye over them and declare’s you equal 110th. I have the certificate to prove it.

 I did improve after that though, one year I headed the leader board, then fell away dramatically after I mistook size 10 as 1/0, Magnus certainly didn’t need a magnifying lens for that one!

 I would tie a lot more than I normally do but during the summer the little corner I tie in becomes so cluttered with rods and reels that it’s just too much effort to clear it every time I feel the need to tie but come the first gale I set too and tidy all the clutter away and I have my nice little tying area back again.

The first couple are my tying bench and the start of this years ‘loops swap and the others are just a small selection fron this years swap.

Fishless In Billericky

Ah well, there you go. Big disappointment, I’m so disappointed I just may have to go fishing again to get over it. God, I hate wind. I have fished in all weathers and made the best of it but wind just does my head in. I don’t mean a gentle breeze I mean a force five or six straight in your face that creates the sort of waves you would be better taking up surfing in. The sort of wind that creates waves that try to knock you over. The sort of wind that finds every little chink in your armour, and whistles through it with glee. And to make it worse it was (apparently) a classic, ‘you should have been here yesterday, they were queueing up to take anything you threw at them, there was hardly a ripple’, etc, etc. Yeah, yeah, now fuck off while I try and get this bloody line out more than twenty feet!. To cap it off  Hanningfield is so low that you have to walk though a hundred feet of mud to get anywhere near the water in the first place.

 Then , as you fish your way along the bank you have to navigate bait anglers intently watching their quiver tip or other anglers tossing toby’s as far as they can!!. I tell you, Britain is going to Hell in a bucket, what is the world coming to? I couldn’t even legitimately sneer at them, they were catching fish, I wasn’t.

 I even resorted to putting a lure on ( Sweeny Todd), I can’t remember the last time I did that. My final flourish was to launch the Woolly Bugger and I have never done that before either.

 On the plus side, Paul turned up (late, what’s new?) along with Steve (congratulations on passing your AAPGAI Provisional), Daniel (long time no see, great to catch up) and Trev (who has promised to show me how to catch huge Bass from the salt next year, obviously a top bloke).

 It then went back down hill again when we tried to buy a takeaway coffee in the cafe and was told we couldn’t. If we wanted coffee in a styrene cup we would have to go to a vending machine… two miles away!

 Hanningfield owes me a shed load of fish and I mean to get them. Pass me the maggots.