Oop, I Done It Again

Casting Instructors are geeky. Casting enthusiasts are geeky (they don’t all want to become instructors, thank God), but there are levels of geekiness, so lets work our way through them.

You want to learn to cast properly so become moderately interested and mildly geeky but that fades over time.

You want to learn to become an instructor. You are new to the casting vocabulary but as you learn it comes more and more into conversations (with non fly fishers) who regard you, at best, eccentric, at worst, insane, and avoid you like the plague. As you get closer to your assessment the worse you get until even your best beloved wants to kill you. (they ain’t seen nothing yet)

You pass your assessment and calm down a bit, best beloved lets you back into bed, life is good.

One year, maybe two years later, you decide to take it to the next level. This period may take a couple of years ( I hope you have a spare bed, because BB had just kicked you out again) and you get anally geeky, your whole life revolves around casting, mechanics, teaching. You spend entire weekends away talking and casting with other instructors. You constantly watch casting videos on YouTube. You read books and articles and when you are not doing any of these you are in the park practicing and obsessed with tracking, timing, loop formation, tailing loops, creep, swinging loops, hauling and a myriad of other problems. Life is not good, you are moody, irritable, anxious.

You pass your assessment, you join the ranks of the good and great in your particular organisation. You stop being geeky. You have reached the top of your tree and calmly survey the mayhem below you with serenity.

But, hang on, what’s that bloke got in his hand? Bloody hell that’s a long rod. You go and speak to them. You ask them what is that thing. ‘It’s a two handed rod my son, a double hander, fifteen feet of God making graphite, I am going to get supremely geeky and become a casting God by passing my test and becoming a two handed instructor and look down on you poor, simple, single handed lesser beings who have no concept of point P or anchor alignment, I will change the casting vocabulary, I will re-invent meanings  and cast confusion around me like confetti. I will learn things about fly casting that you have not even dreamed of. My casting knowledge will astound and perplex you. My aura of masterfulness will permeate the highest reaches of the organisation and then I will pass down the awesome knowledge I have acquired to those who use only a one handed rod and watch with amusement as they grapple with the superior intricacies of Spey casting’.

‘Oh masterful one, you must catch mighty fish on your wonderous, mighty, two handed rod’

‘Fish? you are kidding, right? The river I fish is eighteen inches deep and twenty feet across at its widest. I use a seven foot six inch three weight cane rod and silk line if I want to catch fish.