Essential No 5

There can be no slack in the casting system during the application of power.

”During the application of power”, that’s the bit to remember. After you have stopped you can do whatever you like, and we often do, to make fancy presentation casts or shoot line when false casting.

 Where is slack likely to occur and what will it do to the cast?

 If you have got to the double hauling stage there are a couple of things that can give you slack. If your loops are not dynamic enough to properly straighten the line you will lose effective casting angle because the rod will have to move a substantial distance into the next stroke before the slack is removed so your effective casting angle is now not wide enough for the amount of line you are casting (see, I told you these Essentials all meld together). The same thing will happen if you automatically raise your hauling hand to the ‘ready’ position instead of feeding it back against the tension in the line. Just take a look at the slack between your hauling hand and the butt ring, that’s got to go somewhere and that will be in losing effective casting angle again.

 I’m not sure if I have already mentioned effective casting angle before. It’s the powered part of the casting angle, the bit where you are actually moving the line in the direction of the cast. Now, you might want that to be 10 to 2 because your brain is telling you that that is the correct casting angle for amount of line you are casting but you have taken your hauling hand up too soon so the rod may not acquire the line until 12 so your effective casting angle has now been reduced from 10 to 2 to 12 to 2 and you tail. That’s what slack can do to you.