Indulge me for a few minutes while I set the context. I’m going to put out there some ideas – some things I do or have done which helped. The way my mind works is that I need a organisational framework for ideas, a conceptual structure. That means starting with clarity of purpose. My primary purpose is casting efficiently and accurately with the gear I use for fishing. Casting without superfluous effort helps me enormously. You might be on board for some or all of that but it shapes how and what I practice.

It also helps me to have specific objectives, consistent with my overall purpose – specific things I’m trying to achieve and build into my casting. From a motor learning perspective, my experience matches with scientific studies showing that external objectives are particularly useful. These can be as simple and useful as the shape and behaviour of the line we are trying to produce. Examples include producing loops the size and shape we want, keeping the line legs parallel and getting full extension of the line or as otherwise intended. 

After we have learned the basics of casting technique I now believe our best friend and mentor is trial and error.  (Without practice, of course, we aren’t going to deepen the friendship or impress our mentor.) I’m not saying that teaching and the teachers of fly casting have no use beyond getting folks started. On the contrary, they can be very helpful, especially when they adopt guided self discovery as a fundamental principle shaping how they teach. You can see straight away how trial and error is a very nice fit with guided self discovery.

There are plenty of ideas out there and some are a lot more useful than others. I like to try out different ideas, keep what works and dump what doesn’t. I’ll give a lot of things a fair trial. I might not use the idea as originally proposed but I might adopt some or all of it for a use not originally intended. Also I’m not ashamed to do the occasional bit of dumpster diving. 

A friend of mine played and taught golf at the elite level before he got into fly casting in a big way. He has a lot of time for Ben Hogan and Hogan had a lot of time for trying out ideas.  Let’s throw a few ideas out there and see if you can find some that are useful. 

Use Ground Targets

It’s standard procedure to aim our casts at targets on the ground – I reckon the smaller the better. 

Conscious attention space being limited, it might sometimes be useful to switch off from hitting the target and concentrate on making a movement adjustment required to improve accuracy. I switch back on to the target and off again, repeating as required.

Use Air Targets

It’s often advised to aim at distant targets in front and behind us, things out there on the horizon, but this is something different. Exactly where do you want the rod tip to be at the end of the forward cast, especially the delivery cast?  I imagine making the tip top kiss a pea suspended on a thread. This is where I aim the whole movement of the cast because it is a precise version of having an intended direction.

Reduce Effort

How much effort do I really need to make this cast? Using less until it’s not enough to complete line extension helps to get better answers.

Where am I putting the effort in that isn’t needed? For me and most people it tends to be during the rotational phase of the casting stroke.

Watching Our Casts

Watching how I move is essential to solving the puzzle of how I want to move. Video has its uses. During practice the standard bag of tricks includes opening the stance, using Lee Cummings Triangle Method, combining Pick Up and Lay Down casts (PUALD) with standard overhead false casts all the while, watching and experimenting to find what works best. I use different mixes from side casts to overhead casts – including oval shaped casting strokes – low to the side and back followed by overhead to the front. 

Make a Change and Vary the Application

What happens as you vary the vertical plane of your cast from side casting to upright overhead casting? Can you maintain the same timing and effort profiles? 

Changing the effort profile of a movement is consolidated by successfully varying the nature of the movement. For example, vary how you finish a cast and then try it out in different casting planes. 

Lancio angulato is cool. Worth trying it with dynamic rolls as well as overhead casts. We get the idea of a low arm extension and try doing it with different casts. It works for me. 

 The overhead casting variants range from the basic or foundation cast with a closed stance to a partly open stance with some torso rotation to a fully open stance with significant torso rotation. It also includes casting off the backhand. Can we keep the overall effort profile as we change things like stance and torso rotation?

We can also experiment with different stroke lengths for the same target distance. Short and snappy with a hard stop is one thing. Long and easy with full arm extension is at the other end of the range. In between there are lots of variations to play with. What works best as the distance increases?