The Curious Fly Caster

For quite a while, especially since I got into movement and how we learn (and perform) it, there has been something or some things bothering me about the conceptual models and assumptions underlying how we teach and talk about solutions for, people having casting problems. Something is getting in the way of understanding and perhaps reconciling the differences and resolving the arguments between people with basically good intent but fundamentally different perspectives.  Mel Krieger’s typology of poets and engineers puts us in the ball park but doesn’t give us the rules or equipment to play the game.

I have started and stopped several attempts to understand and explain why in fly casting commentary and discourse we have essentially two groups of different ideas about the rules of the game – the game being learning, teaching and discussing our passion. In one version I wanted to use the contrast between thinking and living in a universe that is either relative or absolute. In another I drew on the preferences of the two brain hemispheres and which is dominant and which is subordinate. This affects our default patterns of thinking. Consequently, we are inclined to think and speak about the same things but in quite different ways which to others either make good sense or are NQR.  I’ve kept part of that journey in the mix. Here it is.

Hemispherical Preferences and Patterns of Thought

For those who are interested, an in-depth exploration of hemispherical preferences can be found in Iain McGilchrist’s book The Master and His Emissary, 2009. At extreme risk of oversimplifying both the pathway of analysis and its destinations,  we use the left brain to search for the details and abstract them from the background – from their context.  We use the left brain to deconstruct things in order to understand how each of the resultant parts work. We use our right brain to assemble a bigger picture including what the left brain has observed. We need both sides for the best understanding of parts and wholes. Preferably the right brain is in overall control. Hence the title of McGilchrist’s book.

We share this hemispherical division of the brain with many creatures. For example, if you watch a bird carefully you will see it rotate and tilt its head to one side or the other, including when it is looking at you. One eye is hemispherically wired to examine the detail – to pick out the bug from the background. The other is more orientated to threat identification, for seeing what’s going on in the bigger picture. (The wiring is contralateral – right eye with left brain, left eye with right brain.)

I don’t think it would be unfair to say that people who are left brain dominant are attracted to the detail rather than the picture overall. They also tend to favour an Aristotelian approach that something is either A or not A. I’m not a philosopher or scholar of Aristotle but it’s not hard to see that it tends towards absolutism. To adopt more contemporary terms it is oriented towards binary, “zero sum” thinking. There are plenty of examples out there like the characterisation of taxonomists as either “splitters” or “joiners”.  One lot sees the differences, the other sees the similarities.

Parts, Wholes and Contexts

Notably, a great deal of fly casting discussion and argument is pre-occupied with correct definitions and correct classifications. I’ve been down that road with physics and biomechanics etc but found the journey ultimately unsatisfying because for me detail is only useful if and when it can be reassembled into a larger whole, ie positioned within a bigger picture. For me the larger whole is variable, fluent (and fluid) fly casting movements. There is always a context and both the parts and the whole need to fit into the context and thus be consonant with it. For me it’s not a choice between parts and wholes but of both fitting within a containing context. 

From my perspective the containing context is fly fishing. I know from decades of fishing that any given session is both similar to and different from, others. To meet the challenge of a dynamic environment we need the capacity to adapt our casting, to vary what we do. We need control of our movements. There is saying in music that I’m fond of: “improvisation is the privilege of the master and the bane of the novice.” 

The end game of learning and practice in fly casting is the ability to execute the solution(s) to a given presentation problem.  Both the problems and the solutions vary from the standard overhead cast to creatively improvised casts.  See the shot, take the shot and make the shot. This undoubtedly gets more difficult as the distance of the shot increases.  Beyond a certain point the range of possible solutions begins to narrow ever more sharply.  A shot at maximum distance has very limited scope for improvisation because it requires a far more specialised combination of body bits moving in a favourable kinetic sequence.  Improving our technique might extend the range within which we can vary and improvise solutions.  However, increasing casting distance inevitably narrows the scope for variation which is actually essential to controlled movements. Compare and contrast this with competitive casting for distance or accuracy where we also need control of our movements but within a much more limited range of variation. To my eye these more specialised casting scenarios are somewhat abstracted from the reality of fly fishing. My preference is for technique that is suited to variability, adaptation and thus overall control of movement. 

Teaching

If we turn to the teaching of fly casting we can see a similar division. The traditional approach, of teaching fly casting to people, sets out to instruct them that there is a correct way to cast and any deviation represents a casting fault.  This approach has been passed down through generations of instructors and their students.  There is now emerging a more expansive approach which is aimed at facilitating student learning, at teaching people to fly cast. I don’t want to repeat what I’ve written elsewhere about the pedagogy of teaching people to fly cast but I want to mention Mosston and Ashworth’s Spectrum of teaching styles. It organises teaching styles into two clusters – reproduction (student learns/reproduces what teacher says) and production (student learns/produces with teacher facilitation). Moving from one and closer to the other involves crossing a student discovery threshold, the line between compliance and insight would be my rendering. Rote learning versus self paced learning would be another relevant characterisation. The authors note that no one style fits all student needs. Again, it’s not about binary choices but getting the mix right for particular students and their needs for their learning stage. My preference for teaching is, to the greatest practical extent, guided self discovery. Overall, students learn best by discovery rather replication.

The absolutism of the one size fits all approach to casting “instruction” has a lot to answer for, notwithstanding that at times and with some people doing some things in that way can be helpful. However, if the journey is, as it should be, towards making the movements ours, towards finding what works after trial and error and playful variation then we are bound to leave the narrow, walled lane of strict reproduction sooner rather than later. This is notably true if we want a learning process best adapted to the fishing experience. 

Conclusion

Having wandered far I find myself intrigued to connect dots that at first glance are a long way apart and without any obvious connection. The big picture and the small picture are different but connected neurologically, causatively and consequentially.  We think in patterns to recognise, apply and “create’ patterns. As the Buddha put it, “With our thoughts we create the world.” In the world of fly casting there are people who are convinced that the answers and understanding lie exclusively in the detail. There are also people, like me, who are slightly more interested in the wood than the trees, much less the molecular structure of bark. My point here is that understanding how fly casting works and doesn’t work benefits from both detail and the bigger picture of how we humans learn and perform movement. 

The problem is bringing the two perspectives together. If the right hemisphere is being given a look in then that is not so difficult. If the left hemisphere rules absolutely the bigger picture is either irrelevant or inadequate or both.