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Fly Casting Movement – Trial and Error
Fly Casting Movement – Play and Variability
Introduction
If you want a wider and more detailed account of movement, play and variability then I recommend Playing with Movement (2019) by Todd Hargrove. Also check out his blog including this post. Much of what follows is informed and supported by his work.
Not being a social media fiend, much less an aficionado, I have recently begun to suspect that talking about movement has become a “thing” and there is something like a movement “movement” going on. In some ways that’s good, especially if it leads more people to better health. It would, however, be a pity if trendy half baked guff took hold instead of a solid combination of science and thoughtful experience. Personally, I have been consciously into movement in a wide variety of modes for most of my life. Last time I wrote about how the literature on movement aligned with my personal quest for efficient fly casting. Getting into the literature of movement has affirmed my personal journey and, it has to be said, raised a regret that I didn’t explore the literature sooner. Sigh. The journey is always the journey. No point in worrying about speed instead of enjoying the travel. Here is a brief account of some more of the things I’ve learned since deciding to explore what lies down the movement road.
We Are Not Machines
Human beings are complex organisms. It makes much more sense to understand ourselves as an ecology than as a machine. Our systems, physiological and psychological, work together collaboratively rather than sequentially or separately. This applies to our movements, both internal and external. To pick fly casting as an example of an external movement what we see while watching the rod arm performing the simplest fly casting stroke belies a host of hidden activity. We can’t make that foundation stroke without having enabling contributions from our senses including sight, touch, balance and proprioception which work in concert with our body bits which are organised and controlled by our central nervous system. Hopefully, all this produces one functionally well timed and coordinated cycle of flexion and extension of one arm. All these contributors, and others, self organise to produce an intended movement outcome capable of towing a fly line from the rod tip and forming a loop which travels through the line resulting in its extension.
So, “simple” movements are the result of complex processes. That is not, however, to say that we will learn to move better by delving ever deeper into the complexity. Rather it is important and pragmatic to go about learning and refining movement skills by doing things harmonious with how we naturally move and learn to move. In simple terms, the question is how best can we support and facilitate the movement self organisation which evolution has provided for us. Equally, how do we avoid getting in the way of self organisation? That’s a clue on choosing between external and internal cues to learn and teach movement. Internal cues focus our attention on what the body bits are doing. External cues focus our attention on what they (body bits) are meant to achieve ie outcomes. It’s an important subject which informs relative choices for complex organisms living in a relative and complex universe. It is definitely not mechanistic, zero-sum stuff from the world of clockwork humans living in a clockwork universe. Might get back to some of that at some point.
Movements Have More or Less Complexity
“Movement skill is the ability to efficiently solve movement problems” (Hargrove, Playing with Movement p.14).
Movement skills and problems come in different levels of complexity. I have recently had the pleasure of watching my granddaughter learning to move: from lying to sitting to rolling to crawling. She didn’t need instruction or even demonstration to efficiently solve her movement problems. She was allowed to explore at her own pace and in her own way which is instinctive rather than cognitive. She learned to move by exploration through trial and error. Watching her was even more delightful having read Feldenkrais and read about his work – from the original book (Awareness Through Movement, 1972) and from movement folks like Hargrove who are heavily influenced by him. Many of Feldenkrais’ ideas about movement were inspired by watching babies learning to move. I’m not about to bore you with a detailed analysis of his work but I do find his ideas about movement extremely interesting, not least because of the fit with my own experience with fly casting movements. Likewise, watching my granddaughter helped me to join some theoretical and experiential dots.
My granddaughter is working on lower and more fundamental levels of movement – first posture and then co-ordination of large limb movements to crawl and soon to walk before she eventually starts running. These skills can be acquired by exploration – by play if you like or “by trial and error”. Skipping past the intermediate levels of movement complexity, fly casting is a complicated and specialised throwing movement at the top level of the movements scale. As we travel up the scale the demands for co-ordination and control increase and as they do we need to put in more work, through repetition and practice, to acquire and to improve those skills. Throwing things accurately is unique to our species. Basic throwing movements come somewhat naturally from typical play activity (at least they used to !) but high level throwing will probably require more work. Specialised throwing movements like fly casting do not come “naturally”. We need to do work to perform them well and a lot of work to perform them at an elite level.
Ultimately, however, each of us must find our own movement solutions to the movement problems of presenting the fly where we want it to land and how we want it to land. The nature of the problem varies, especially out on the water, so the solutions we organise our bodies to provide also change. We find solutions by exploring what works and as we get better we increase both our range of standard solutions and our ability to solve new problems or devise new solutions – to improvise. Expertise in a complex movement like fly casting requires control in both repetition and improvisation. For this we need both work and play. I’ve written quite a bit now about casting practice. It is the work part of the deal but that should not be confused with drudgery which is pretty much the opposite of being playful.
Play
Before I go any further two things need to made clear. First, if you are interested in movement as a learner, a teacher or both (preferably) then Hargrove and Feldenkrais are well worth a read. If nothing else make sure to read Chapter 10, Skill, of Playing with Movement. It will save you a lot of time chasing rabbits and ploughing through academic, peer reviewed literature. His work is based on scientific research and publications.
Secondly, I’m going to discuss play and its role in learning to fly cast better and when I use the word “play” I don’t mean frivolity or mucking around pointlessly. For my money play is having fun through creativity, innovation, adaptivity and exploration. Play is a means of learning things experientially – individually and interactively with others. We share this delight with many other animals that learn all sorts of seriously essentially survival skills by playing, often with family or wider group members. Play might seem frivolous to the critical, uptight eye of reductive observers but they are missing the point. Play has purpose and play is focussed but it is different because it is more about the process than the outcome. Play helps us deal with uncertainty, just like it does for other playful animals.
Hmm ok, but how is play going to make me a better fly caster, golfer, cricketer or footballer? A short and simple answer is that it will enhance your openness and responsiveness to changes in your environment. Play enables us to deal with uncertainty by becoming adept and adaptive when faced with the uncertain and the unexpected. I’m not going down the path of detailed analysis and explanation. For now I would offer that basically either you “get” play or you don’t and if you don’t it might be worth looking further into it. Play is something I want more of in my fly casting. We need to consider that neither play nor structured practice (drills) hold all the answers. The mix is different for different types of movement. Babies don’t need structured lessons or practice to learn to roll, crawl or stand. As complicated as these movement tasks might be they are not in the same league as driving a golf ball down the middle of the fairway or landing a fly in a hat lying on the ground some 60’ feet away using a fly line towed by a 9’ flexible extension of your arm.
The more technically demanding movement skills seem to require more structured learning and practice. Previously I would have said that casters like musicians need to master skills before becoming free to improvise – that is to play freely. Now, the jury is out on the both sequence and the mix. Maybe it would be a good idea to balance, say, 30 or 40 minutes of more structured practice (work) with 10 or 15 minutes of relatively unstructured “play time” either by dividing the practice session into two blocks or spending it with alternate or intermingled attention to work and to play. I’m going to try all those approaches and see what stands out as most enjoyable and most useful. Yep, I’m going to play with it and see what works best for me. I won’t be surprised if they all work and that shifting between different mixes works even better.
Let’s look at three champions in three different sports being playful. (I usually watch this sort thing with the sound muted.)
The first example is Donald Bradman. This guy, if you don’t know of him, is still regarded as the finest cricketer ever to have held a bat. Here he is throwing a golf ball against the rounded base of a tank stand and playing cricket shots to the returning ball using a cricket stump as his bat. Notice the variability of the ball’s movement in bouncing off a round and uneven surface. Notice the size of the contact area between a golf ball and a cricket stump, both of which are narrow and round. Consider the precision and co-ordination required just to make contact much less to direct the ball into a cricket shot. Trust me, the degree of difficulty is off the scale. You might want to overlook the play element and classify his actions as a drill but I think it is both.
Next is Tiger Woods repeatedly juggling a golf ball against a club face before playing a shot with the moving ball. No way you would call that a drill but is it nothing more than a party trick?
Lastly here is some footage of Lionel Messi in training. You will notice that at least part of his regime is structured and repetitive and he is practicing different forms of agile changes of direction and avoidance of an obstacle similar to a tackler’s outstretched leg. Have a look at this one for more juggling. Now watch any of the related YouTube videos of Messi playing actual football matches. Wow. Noting but skipping over the huge list of superlatives for his technical and improvisational virtuosity, what I see is a distinct playfulness in both his evasion of opponents and his goal scoring. His work has enabled his play.
My point in linking to these videos is that all of these maestros of their sports have managed to combine the discipline of achieving technical skill and the fun of improvising in the exercise of their skills. Moreover, they all do it expressively, in different ways with different mixes.
Now I want to switch to variability which obviously a good fit with playful and creative exploration. Improvisation is creative variation. My recent reading has supported and enlarged my decision to practice with more variation and less repetition.
Variability
What is variability in our context of fly casting? It happens at both the unconscious level and at conscious/intentional level (and probably somewhere between the two). It means that not only do we never step into the same water twice but when we cast we never move EXACTLY the same even when we are casting in the same overall manner to the same target.
About a century ago Nikolai Bernstein realised that repetitive movements, even those of an expert blacksmith hammering on an anvil, were not identical. The overall pattern and outcome were repeated but after extensive observation he concluded that “none of [our] actions is repeated but every action is constructed anew; it’s just a matter what level regulates this construction”. I haven’t read his work and might never do so. What matters to me is getting past the illusion of identical repetitions by humans as machines. We are complex living organisms. Control is what we are really after rather than a selection of fixed programmes to be executed on demand. Variability is not a fault, it is rather a noble practice by which the central nervous system (CNS) controls our movements and learns to control our movements. Control then is relative, dynamic and relies on variability which is, actually, the “programme”. So, it makes sense to embrace variability and to practice it deliberately to give the CNS what it wants – variation.
As we perform each cast we will vary and adjust the movement and the effort we exert in performing it and we do that consciously to some extent and unconsciously to some extent. Now that will raise some eyebrows in the instructosphere but I’m not too worried about that. I’m now convinced that we can help our casting control and movement skill by mixing things up a bit, especially after basic movement skills are acquired. All of us need to find our own ways of making variation work for us. I’ve consciously added more variation to my practice sessions casting, for example, to the different targets at different distances and with a mix of techniques – side cast, overhead, backhand, forehand, dynamic rolls and so on. Sometimes I vary the finish – hard stop, boink stop with an extra bit of wrist or finish “stopless” meaning soft and easy with full arm extension. Each requires changes in the effort profile of the movement. I do this to help improve movement control rather than to make sure I have a particular set of technical arrows in the casting quiver.
The problem with endless repetition is that it runs the risk of becoming drudgery instead of enjoyable work. For me that started to happen when the repetition no longer provided much learning, enjoyment or improvement. The red flag goes up when it ceases to provide enjoyment. That’s when mindlessness begins to set in. Above all we want our practice to remain mindful and purposeful. Rather than damn all repetition as inherently boring I’d say that it served me well for quite a while and it might serve you well too in really nailing the movement skills of fly casting. There is, however, more to motor learning at a high level of skill than doing exactly the same things in large blocks. Series can kick in. Variation can widen the options further.
I still practice accuracy at different distances but I now find it more interesting and helpful to do it with much more intentional variation. Previously I set up a line of golf balls on spikes at 10 foot intervals starting at 50’. I would then make repeated casts to each ball and between them in the pursuit of consistent accuracy with nice extension and loop shapes. Later I used the targets as measures of how far I could cast without noticeable effort.
What about now? Let’s say I pick out a short to medium distance target – a leaf, a tuft of grass or whatever. I will cover it a few times using an overhead action, sometimes PUALD and sometimes with one or two false casts. Then I might change shoulders and do it backhand. Then I might switch to dynamic rolls, again switching shoulders. Of course I might just switch around at random. Next, I’ll pick another target and play around with covering it in the same sorts of ways. I might then take a few steps and cover it or a different target from a different angle and wind orientation. You get the idea. Mix it up. Play with your food.
For longer distances I have a couple of targets in front and usually one behind me as well. I present to all of them and see how effortlessly I can perform the cover. If I’m not happy I’ll shorten up and refresh the sensation of casting without superfluous effort. What I don’t do is keep casting in the same way at the same target in the hope of sorting problems out.
Summing Up
Play is purposeful in its exploration and creativity.
Variation is not a weakness or fault but rather a natural and normal aid to improvement of movement control.
Incorporating both in our practice helps define and strengthen fundamental features of casting technique.
It’s a good idea to play with variability.
Moving on – to Movement
The other day i was down at the park practicing and a passer-by stopped and said with animated delight that what I was doing “was so graceful”. I thanked her with equal enthusiasm and said, “I’m so glad you said that because that is exactly what it is about.” How I have come to that conclusion is a long and complex story, parts of which I have written about numerous times and part of which, I have recently discovered, again, goes to the essence of how I want to fly cast. Functionally and self expressively I want to move efficiently and therefore gracefully.
This is a shortish version of the story. In other posts and pages on this site I’ve covered the mechanics and biomechanics of fly casting. It’s all there in the menu section to the left of this page. That knowledge, together with some basic understanding of sensory motor learning changed my objectives for improving my casting and the revised practice regime I use to pursue those objectives.
The science led me to look for efficiency gains in my casting technique, a search given added impetus by the need to manage a shoulder problems and thereby extend the duration of my fly fishing career. (You start thinking seriously about such things as you get older.) Science, however, did not tell me much about how to change my movement patterns. It informed the choice of outcomes but had little to say about the process of obtaining them. Experientially, I found that efficiency was the gift that kept on giving and Santa became much more generous after I ditched the idea that casting longer meant casting better.
Fast forward a year or two and back in October last year I announced my complete departure from an “athletic” model of fly casting, choosing instead a qualitative goal of minimising effort to fully replace any vestiges of the quantitative goal of maximising distance. Having done that I wanted to turn more towards the art of movement and away from the science of it. I’m not dissing science but I am saying I have had enough of it for the time being at least. It has ceased to add significant value to my casting.
Parallel to my own casting aspirations I took a plunge into the teaching of other people to fly cast. There is still plenty of work to be done in that area but for now I’ll leave all that to other folks. In exploring the teaching of movement I found myself again researching how people learn movement – what helps and what hinders that process. That led, eventually, to boning up on movement at large – well beyond the playing fields, tennis courts and golf ranges. I freely admit these are early days and very much a work in progress. However, research to date has thrown up a splendidly fundamental idea that seems to owe much to the influential work of Moshe Feldenkrais. It had that bedrock feel about it when my research shovel connected with it.
Feldenkrais’ idea is that efficient movement is made without any superfluous effort. It is a simple idea that, once grasped, sharpens the focus considerably. It certainly had that effect on me. The idea of eliminating all superfluous effort was soon given a field trial in a practice session and…. bingo there it was – more distance from less effort, especially in the finish of the stroke – back and forward. A web search of “efficient movement superfluous effort” throws up some interesting results and one of them is from Todd Hargrove’s blog (the old one)
Hargrove is a manual and movement therapist who has trained in the Feldenkrais Method and Rolfing. Two quotes will give you a taste:
“As applied to the body, efficiency means the ratio of useful work performed compared to the energy expended to do the work. Put another way, efficiency determines how much of the energy you expend by muscular contraction creates a successful movement, such as running, kicking, throwing, standing, walking or breathing.”
“In my opinion, efficiency is an excellent measure of how coordinated any action is. In other words, the higher the efficiency, the more coordinated the action is and vice versa. In fact, I would argue that the optimal way to do anything, whether it is breathing, walking, standing or playing sports, is the way that maximises efficiency.”
Efficient fly casting then is producing the cast you want without superfluous effort. This is much more than a minimum effort casting drill that has been normalised into standard casting technique because the stroke used may or may not be efficient and we might be simply stalling the casts. An efficient casting stroke uses the least possible effort, at every stage, for the given distance and type of presentation being attempted.
Ok then so good technique is smooth, co-ordinated and (comparatively) effortless and that comes from using energy efficiently. That means it is mechanically and biomechanically efficient. How do we get there?
I can think of two possible answers. First we might try developing good technique and then, as a secondary stage or refinement, we could try reducing the effort used to perform the movement. I’m pretty confident this is what most fly casting instructors would recommend.
However, given what I’ve been doing for several years and reading most recently here is an alternative approach. What if we turn that around and start by deliberately minimising the force used which consequently leads to improving our technique (faster). The first way we might get to efficient casting with better technique permitting less effort. Effort reduction, however, is somewhat of an afterthought or byproduct. The second way we start with the objective of efficiency, of eliminating superfluous effort. Now the quantitative outcome, like how far we cast, becomes more like the afterthought or by-product. Ok so maybe that’s a big ask for a beginner at their first session but I’m now convinced that if we want to get seriously good, good enough to be graceful, then we need to ruthlessly get rid of superfluous effort – all of it. That becomes the primary objective. Here’s a nifty way of looking at this. Technique does not facilitate the use of greater effort. Technique is achieved by eliminating unnecessary effort. With efficiency as the primary objective of technique, it therefore becomes the key performance indicator of technique.
One last observation from both the literature and my own experience. Using superfluous effort makes it far more difficult to fix faults in technique, probably because it is at least partly responsible for the faults being there in the first place. This explains why it is preferable, more effective, far easier and much more pleasurable to work on technique at medium distance rather than at long distance.
In addition to its redundancy, excess effort has a lot of downside and no upside I can think of. It leads to:
- Greater mechanical and biomechanical inefficiency (eg. slack and SLP problems like over rotation)
- Impediment of improved technique (eg. poor tracking, tailing, accuracy and yes, even outright distance)
- Impediment of timing, co-ordination and smoothness of power application
Here’s the pointy end of understanding, practising and teaching fly casting as movement. When I think about what makes movement both effective (outcome achieves goal) and aesthetically pleasing (graceful) it is the flow of the movement, its completion a) as a whole and b) without superfluous effort. It is not my experience that a scientific examination and analysis of movement gets us anywhere nearer to the wholeness of a movement, its learning and/or its teaching as such. Performance of movement always and rightly has a strong subjective component. Objective science takes an ever more detailed inventory of the disassembled parts identified as contributing to function, efficiency and even fluency. This reminds me of an internal combustion engine with its bits spread out on a workshop floor, no fuel or vehicle in sight. Science has never made a presentation to a spooky fish nor has it driven an F1 car at race winning speed. It can add value to those endeavours but it lacks a big picture of them.
I remember reading a long time ago a piece by prominent Australian biomechanics expert, Bruce Elliot. He made the telling point that “Trial and error are the primary determinants in changes to stroke mechanics”. The first nations people of this country have been around for a very long time – 60,000 years or more – and they were/are very successful in learning to throw things like spears and boomerangs at their food, the animals which fed them. Those skills were passed down very effectively through countless generations without a single peer reviewed article being researched, written and published.
Diving deeper into movement, my next ventures will be concerned with play and variability as facilitators of skill acquisition. I’ll get back to you on that stuff.
Fly Casting Practice 3.0 – Movement Variation
Almost by happenstance I have updated my practice regime for a third time. If you read through my page on Practice, created several years back, you will notice that is has been updated as my changes in casting needs and practice objectives required a different practice regime. I have changed how I practice more than what I practice and the principles of structured, purposeful and mindful practice are unchanged. The latest changes in the regime are not in any way a case of out with old and in with new. They are just variations on established themes.
I still practice accuracy and efficient effort and I still do it using the same basic bag of tricks including the triangle method, minimal effort drills, PUALDs, attention to back casts and attention to forward casts together with shortening up and lengthening out. Two things have been changed.
First, practice sessions have gotten shorter and I stop when I am satisfied that my objective(s) for the session were achieved. I don’t keep banging way with repetition to test the extent to which changes are grooved. That’s simply because my grooves have been defined and deepened to the point where I know when I am in and when I am not in one of them. It’s now more about reinforcement and refinement than about reconstruction. There is also a point in any practice session where more becomes less and we begin to do more harm than good. We begin to lose form because of mental and/or physical fatigue and fatigue has a way of messing up our grooves. Importantly, we want to finish on a positive note which leaves our recollection connected with the affirmation of success.
Secondly, in keeping with the first point I am able to mix things up more and more quickly. For example, a few dynamic rolls casts might be followed by PUALDs at the same distance, followed by a series of overheads in various planes between side casts and vertical overhead casts. Some are made with more false casting and attention to things like carry and haul execution and timing.
Accuracy drills are no longer performed at measured distances. They are now to chosen targets like a leaf or clump of grass at significantly different distances. Once I get within a chosen proximity of the target it’s time to choose another target. Two or three attempts are usually enough. I treat each target more as a fishing shot than as a known accuracy/distance drill to be repeated until consistency is demonstrated.
Instead of a line of golf ball targets set at 10′ intervals between 50’ and 90’ I now use a single target reference point of 80’. I can cast at that target to check both accuracy and efficiency. I can cast in front or beyond it by five, ten or even twenty feet.
Without the reference line of the spaced golf balls I can still check my tracking by watching the loops in both directions for curvature of the fly leg and by casting between two fixed and distant points like tree trunks in a park and light poles or goal posts at sports grounds. Stopping a few back casts lets me see how they land and check for straightness and extension. Also I can walk around and cast with the wind at different angles – behind me, to the side, or head on.
In changing targets and target distances frequently I have to reposition and draw in line to shorten up or let it out to lengthen the cast. This provides opportunities to play with snaps and snake rolls, speys and dynamic rolls with shoots.
Sometimes I switch to right hand casting instead of my dominant left hand casting. Switching back and forth from one to the other shows the right hand what to do and helps define the nature of the skill difference and the feel difference between the two sides. This helps both sides.
I find all this variation more interesting and enjoyable than learning by block or serial repetition in a fixed orientation to the wind. My technique is (mostly) up to it so I don’t get lost and have to find my way again. And guess what? This kind of practice is much more like actual fly fishing where targets appear at different distances and bearings. Presenting a fly to them often requires speedy adaptation.
In the last few months I have made a slight gear change in that all I use is a 5wt DT floater with my 9’ 5wt rod. I know that whatever distance I max out at (with efficient effort!) will be longer when I use my WF fishing lines (typically 5-10’ longer). Carry is slightly easier to maintain with a DT but it doesn’t shoot as far. It hurts less to wear out cheapy DTs than more expensive WFs.
Now, I have recently been reading more on motor learning and it so happens that a newer line of inquiry suggests that motor variability – exploring different ways of performing a specific movement is very much part of how we humans are set up to learn movement. Consistent with that, varying the ways we move in general (what we do and how we do it) sounds like it might help with learning more specific movement patterns like fly casting. Will leave the detail for another time but it’s an interesting thought in many ways.
None of this changes the inescapable reality that if you want to get good at something you have to do the work. Practice is work but there is no reason why it can’t be both productive and enjoyable at the same time – a mix of work and play if you like. Finally, I would repeat that changes I’ve made don’t invalidate the original regime and if you are about to embark on more rigorous practice I would still suggest that you shape what you do with the 80/20 split as a guide. Spend 80% of your time on the 20% of things that are most important for your casting.
Teaching Fly Casting: Progress Report
It has taken a while but I have finally put together what I want to say after researching the teaching of fly casting. If and when I change my mind or want to add something I will amend this page.
What I focus is on in this most recent article is how we should teach – on the pedagogy of teaching in general and teaching movement in particular. There are mountains of discussion and argument about what we should be teaching casters at different stages of their journey. Not much of the what informs the how, particularly at the fundamental level of theory, principle and conceptual frameworks. I hope some readers who are interested in improving their teaching will find some leads in what I’ve written.
Should you want to join a discussion of the how then I would be open to facilitating an email group for that purpose. If you use the contact button you will reach me by email and I will reply and keep you informed of developments. Look forward to hearing from you.
Fly Casting Movements – Athletic, Aesthetic or Just Practical?
Odd question(s) to ask, surely, but indulge me for a moment.
My fly casting journey was driven originally by the simple idea that by casting better I could fish better. It was a practical endeavour. After a while that changed somewhat when casting became something I enjoyed exploring because it was difficult and complex and, you know, because I’m curious. At that stage much of what I was learning and practicing came originally from the lore of competitive fly casting. It was useful, to a point, but I felt a strong need to keep my casting connected with my fishing. More recently I’ve noticed another shift in what drives my casting – in my objectives if you like. Reflecting on the passage from back then to just now I can make some deeper sense of the journey, providing narrative continuity to something that previously seemed episodic and undirected by anything much more than a desire to improve. This post retraces some of the story and I write it now as just that, a story and not as a manifesto, much less a sermon. As ever, make of it what you will.
For me competition fly fishing or fly casting aren’t places I want to go. My model is one of personal excellence which does not depend upon and is not demonstrated by, being better than other people at doing something. With that in mind I will make no attempt to advance my way of thinking about and of doing things by pointing out the problems with alternate models. I much prefer mutual recognition of common ground and respect for difference.
From competition casting comes the idea that distance proves technique because long casts require sound technique. Doubtless that is true in a general sense but it doesn’t quite cover the field. Back five years ago when I started the present phase of my fly casting journey I tried following the notion of distance casting as the model for and means of, developing robust technique. The general idea is that if you can cast 100’ then 60’ will be effortless. Accordingly, you build your technique for distance casting and/or accuracy competition and that’s it, job done.
I gave it a good shot and made countless casts out to 100’ or so and a pretty good number considerably beyond 100’. However, when I tried aiming at targets 70′ – 80’ away my technique was found wanting. I couldn’t reliably achieve both the range and bearing requirements. At the distances common for accuracy comps I was just fine, though without any plonking down of the fly and line – anathema to a sight fishing addict.
So it was time for a change and I turned away from distance as a quantitative outcome towards efficiency of technique as the qualitative driver of outcomes – range and bearing included. Around this time a nagging shoulder problem finally persuaded me to reconstruct my technique into a 3 phase system which went from no rotation of the torso for short-medium casts to some rotation for medium-long casts and then substantial rotation for the longest casts.
Once the changes began to be grooved and tracking was restored I began to turn toward to economy of effort as the primary objective of my technique – finding ways to do more with less. (As explained in this post.)
I see now that the shift to economy of effort as the objective effectively marked the end of any remaining aspects of an athletic casting model followed previously. The means had become an important end in itself. Striving for qualitative rather than quantitative outcomes – minimising effort rather than maximising distance means that “maximum” distance is now how far my casts go without any disproportionate effort which attempts to overcome faltering technique. Will that help my fishing? Yes, almost certainly.
In recent correspondence a friend of mine mentioned Picasso’s famous antiwar painting “Guernica”. From artist to viewer, the message I get from it is simple. What makes it a great work of art is the power of its expression. – emotional and intellectual responses undifferentiated. There’s a fair bit of ground to map out between Picasso and me casting (!!) but thinking about the painting and looking at it again started to connect some dots on my conscious and unconscious map. The dots were:
- Grace is economy of movement
- Objectively, we are taken by the aesthetic of graceful, effortless movement – it is moving, appealing and beautiful
- Analytically we can pull it all apart via mechanics, biomechanics, sensory motor control/learning etc and we can get some, repeat some, insight into how it happens but little or no understanding of why it happens and how we see and appreciate it
- Grace, then, sits at the intersection of art and science
There has been extensive exploration of science. Now I want to spend more time with art. To be clear it’s not a binary choice and I’m not finished with science but I do want to reposition it.
So, in a recent practice session I got closer again to what I want to do, at will and on demand. I was knocking out 75′- 80’ casts with a 5wt and DT 5 with ridiculous ease, enjoying it immensely and not just because it was efficient, effective and the effort was economic. The short version of what I was doing is “slow aim”. Start slow, go easy, finish full exactly on target is the longer script. I realised this is what I have been drawn towards for the last five years. It is what I enjoy doing as opposed to thinking I should be doing. Finally, in both senses, I realised that I enjoy casting like this because it is expressive. Taking a chance here but there it is, the fourth E of movement.
If I were writing for an audience of dancers or gymnasts what I just mentioned would be instantly understood and accepted – movement is expressive. It’s not, in my view, a coincidence that two of the prominent and “easy on the eye” casters (Joan Wulff and Christopher Rownes) were both professional dancers and dance teachers. Everyone knows about Joan Wulff and her success in casting tournaments but I also remember reading about her saying that fly casting was feminine and beautiful and that was why she loved it. The interview with Rownes linked to above is well worth the watch. He, like my partner, is a graduate from the Royal School of Ballet. They get movement as comprised of parts and performed as a whole, expressively.
First any fish, then big fish, then fishing.
First any cast, then long casts, then casting.
Fly Casting Practice Update 2.1: 80% is a Magic Number
If you search the internet for something like “learning practice skills 80/20” you’ll get a surprisingly broad range of hits on everything from the Pareto principle to corporate sales success and rock climbing. Refine the search by adding “sports” between “practice” and “skills” and you will get leads to a wide variety of sports and fitness training. I’m not into numerology but I do find it interesting that the 80/20 split bobs up so often, in a variety of ways and in a variety of contexts.
Back when I wrote the article on fly casting practice I noted that a lot of elite level sports coaches rely on identifying the 20% of things that matter most and get their players to spend 80% of their time working on those things.
My frequent use of a medium distance (my comfort zone) was mentioned. Back then it was about 60′ which is a tad under 80% of the outer range (80′) of fishing casts I wanted to make confidently and reliably.
I also noted advice given to me by John Waters to practice casting technique refinements at about 70% of the speed and effort normally used for a given distance. To do that you need to shorten up the actual target casting distance but use the range of movement you would normally use for a longer cast. (Call that longer distance 100%,) Use a 100% range of movement for a “70%” distance but only use 70% of the usual speed and therefore, effort.
More recently I added Practice Regime Update 2.0 (and see also the blog post Fly Casting Practice 2.0 ) to reflect my contemporary objectives which have modestly extended fishing distance out to 90′ (from 80′). In the last few sessions I’ve made progress in increasing efficiency by reducing effort – especially after becoming even more ruthless in detecting and excluding effort increases disproportionate to distance increases. I’ve noticed that 70′ seems to be on its way to becoming my new medium distance comfort zone. Guess what, 80% of 90 is 72.
Without over-egging the pudding I think 80% is quite a useful number:
- I’m staying with an indicative time allocation of 80% for the most important 20% of skills to master.
- Eighty percent of the maximum intended distance (with accuracy) is a good place to look for a casting comfort zone within which we can find the effort profile we want to preserve as distance is increased (or decreased) from there.
- Pursuing more distance with less effort I reckon 80% is roughly the absolute ceiling on how hard I’m prepared to go at any cast.
- Progressive increases in cast distance serve to indicate overall progress on technique refinement and to identify exactly where technique begins to falter. Back up to about 80% of that marker and repeat the process.
- Very little time is now spent on maximum distance casts – less than 5% probably – and then only with restrained effort.
- One hundred percent of effort or practice time seeking maximum distance is very bad juju.
Casting Efficient, Narrow Loops – Why, What and How
There I was down at the park again dodging rain showers by standing under some fir trees with their obligingly dense foliage. While I waited I played with side casting using PUALDs and false casts producing delivery casts out to fifty something feet. Circumstances limited how far I could cast and how vertical my casting strokes could be but they put me in a modified triangle method situation where I could see everything that was going on. Had time on my hands so I used it to explore just how narrow I could make the loops and how consistently I could throw them.
To understand my thinking it might help to catch up on my earlier and more recent stuff on practice, efficient effort and sensory motor learning. It’s all there in the blog. Before I get to where it lead me today a very quick return to mechanics is in order (see Physics For Fly Casting – the Einstein Series in the pages menu) . Newton’s second law of motion tells us that net Force in the intended direction of the cast will equal mass times acceleration. Efficient casting optimises net Force and inefficient (over powered casting) reduces net Force.
From there we jump to the five essentials and touch base with the Straight Line Path (SLP) which is the path described by the rod tip which tows the line. To optimise net Force we need to cast in straight lines and with straight lines (minimaL slack and good tracking). Logic says a longer SLP will generate more net Force. What Fitts Law tells us is that moving slower (smoother) enables us to move more accurately. A longer, smoother, slower stroke will mean more control and thus greater efficiency where that is defined as moving so as to optimise net Force in the intended direction of the cast..
That all begs a not so obvious question. Where, exactly, is the intended direction of my next cast? I’ll get to that in a minute.
How About the How?
What none of the above tells us is how to do it. Casting “instructors” are taught to tell their students about the faults in their technique which are working against producing narrow loops at will as a result of moving efficiently. This kind of direct teaching is somewhat useful for beginners but saying what not to do because it’s wrong isn’t always going to facilitate learning how to do it right, especially when the student’s technique is fairly settled at an advanced or even intermediate level. There are crucial differences between learning a basic movement technique and learning to refine that technique.
Concentrating on what the body bits should or shouldn’t be doing in a fixed sequence and with desirable effort (timing and force application) is known as internal cuing. It has been clearly established that external cuing works better. External cuing assumes people have sufficient movement control over their body bits to achieve a specific result or purpose. Clarity of purpose and trust in the student’s processes of self organisation and self discovery are better tools for teaching movement than finding faults and picking nits. Most of us will be familiar with useful casting similes like painting the ceiling or flicking the potato off your fork. Those are examples of external cues – prompts to adapt already learned movement routines to another similar movement routine.
Like a lot of fly casters I can get reasonable results by focussing on what the line is doing including loop size and I can use that as an external cue which prompts me to vary my movements until I get what I’m seeking. It’s not exclusively about loop size before turnover but for the sake of simplicity let’s pretend it is. When we are fishing it’s almost always desirable to put the fly where we want it to go (range and bearing thing) as well landing it in the way we want – tuck, pile, rain drop or plop etc. Again for simplicity I’ll leave out everything but narrow loops and full turnover/extension so the fly lands deftly on target.
When we are practicing to improve our casting technique aiming at targets on the deck is certainly helpful, not least in training for “see the shot, take the shot” fishing scenarios. However, if we want to improve technique by casting narrow loops what I discovered underneath those fir trees was about aiming the casting stroke itself (rather than thinking about the fly) at a target. Picking a tree and a fork or bark patch as the target was where it started – where do I have to aim so that the stroke optimises the SLP and thus narrows the loop? What I finished with was somewhat different. It concerned where the stroke itself was aimed, how I moved to direct it at that target and, perhaps most importantly, how I finished the movement. It was more like aiming the whole movement at an unmarked point in the air towards which the rod tip moved smoothly and then stopped on that unmarked spot – end of movement, cast completed. The whole movement now had a specific purpose – hit that target.
That might sound a bit weird so let’s go back to painting the ceiling only this time we do it so that the brush or roller repeatedly travels along the same straight line and then stops repeatedly and exactly at the chosen limit of our reach. Take that a half step further and beyond the limits of normal brush control. Stop the brush repeatedly at a transverse pencil line so the finished brush strokes form an even, straight line or edge of the painted area. If the pencil line doesn’t work for you maybe think about stopping at the cornice edge or the corner where the ceiling joins the wall making one of those two the straight line we want to paint to – and no further. Either way this is what I was trying to do by aiming my casting stroke. That was my purpose and my exact intended direction of the cast.
To achieve these brush strokes of a master artist or fly caster we will need to carefully and thoughtfully adjust both where we aim and how fast we move. An ultra narrow loop in the fly line with fly leg and rod leg in the same plane without casting tails and with full unhurried extension of the leader is actually quite tricky but it will demand exactly the sort of stroke and effort control needed to land the fly on a saucer placed underneath overhanging branches, between two tree trunks or into a gap in the rocks.
I’m putting this out there in the hope that it will be of help, especially to those who want to refine their technique beyond the basics. I don’t know to what extent my “aiming the stroke” at an invisible target will help you because I haven’t tried it with anyone else. Take what you want from the specifics. Maybe you need to find another external cue that works for you like your exact hand position at the end of the stroke. Please feel free to use the contact button to let me know via email how you got on.
The more general message here, of which I am quite confident, is to find and follow a purpose for your casting movements during practice. Work on something or a couple of things at a time. It’s generally wise to start at about the short-medium distance, lengthen out and shorten up trying to maintain form.
Repetition for it’s own sake gives a cents in the dollar return compared with mindful practice. By “mindful” I mean being purposeful as well as focussed and relaxed. When any of those three things begins to wane irretrievably I start thinking about wrapping up a practice session.
Fly Casting Practice 2.0 : Efficient Effort
Let’s begin by briefly touching base with the the Famous Five Essentials or rather the most important essentials, the Straight Line Path (SLP) and its best friend Smooth Power Application (Acceleration). The SLP is what happens when we apply power efficiently – basic mechanics. Producing an optimal SLP is virtually impossible without smooth power application to our body bits which move the rod which tows the line.
Taking that a couple of steps further, when we apply power we subjectively experience that as effort. When we make any movement, such as a throwing movement, with sundry body bits each bit is given an intended range of movement, speed of movement and a slot in a movement sequence. We regulate effort to control how far and how fast we move. We can make adjustments to the movement by adjusting the effort we make when and if sensory feedback tells us that things aren’t going as expected . All this was dealt with in my previous post on effort as an organising idea for control . Historically, I’ve banged on about efficiency ad nauseam so enough already but take and make of what follows as you choose.
Ok then so what would happen if we decided to apply those ideas absolutely – not just as good ideas which influence how we cast but to take them to the limit and build a casting stroke with strict adherence to them – maximal efficiency from minimal effort? I’ve been trying to do this just because I’m curious and for other equally good reasons one of which is that casting with optimal efficiency is very enjoyable. Also, several years ago my casting shoulder started to hurt occasionally after long practice sessions so to prevent that injury increasing until it terminated my fly fishing I needed to make some stroke changes.
Excess effort diminishes efficiency by reducing the Straight Line Path and the smoothness of power application which in turn can result in tailing loops. In the parlance of fly casting instruction over powering is a common fault. I think, however, that there’s probably more to it than that. As I recently discovered (in my own casting) it also impedes the refinement of technique because excess effort diminishes control. The behaviour of the fly line, in particular loop shape and alignment of both the fly leg and the rod leg (in the same plane), gives us solid evidence of and visual feedback for mechanical and biomechanical efficiency. We get additional sensory feedback from the subjective effort to objective result comparison – how easy or how hard we needed to move to make a cast. I experience effort feedback during the movement sequence – how hard at what stage in the sequence did I just move my upper arm, forearm or hand for example? That is, “what was the effort profile of that movement sequence”. Adjustment happens by feeding forward changes in the effort profile – relatively more or less forearm or hand effort for example.
As Fitts law tells us, movement accuracy (control) suffers with speed (effort). Keeping that in mind we might understand excess effort as being any more effort than is required to make the intended movement (cast). That means we need to drill down much deeper than the over powering fault diagnosis teachers often make when their students are casting like windscreen wipers. As suggested above we might take this to its logical limit and consider that any excess effort is a technical impairment.
All that happens to be the path I’ve chosen. Consider an alternative and aesthetic perspective. My partner is a graduate of the Royal Ballet School and she long ago shared with me the idea that grace is economy of movement. The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson summed it up nicely when he wrote that, “The line of beauty is the result of perfect economy”. If you have ever watched a superlative caster you will have noticed, instinctively, the effortlessness with which they cast. They cast with economy of effort and it is beautiful to watch.
One last thought before I set out how my practice regime has been supplemented. A vast amount has been written and spoken about being in a state of flow. In sports we hear a lot about being “in the zone”. Recently I watched a TV doco which looked at performance and brain wave patterns among archers – both an elite archer and then some students. What struck and stuck with me was the definition of “the zone” as a state of both intense focus and complete relaxation. You might prefer something less pointy and if so “mindfulness” could have more appeal. This is the state I try to maintain when practicing. I get more from 45 minutes of mindful practice than from two hours of determined practice. Both are purposeful.
My recent practice sessions have been adapted to:
- Maximise efficiency by minimising effort
- Modify my casting stroke to protect my casting shoulder – more shoulder flexion and extension instead of horizontal and vertical rotation. (See here for what that means if unsure.)
- Restore accuracy after these changes and at distances out to normal fishing limits -ie 80’ – 90’ .
To do this I’ve evolved a combination of existing drills.
- Use minimal effort for full and accurate extension of the line with tight loops
- Start short – c.5m – casting to targets smoothly
- Ensure loops are neat, narrow and aligned in both casting directions (tracking, tracing and SLP) and watch the dangly bits at the fly end – smooth casting means less dangly bits.
- Preserve the effort profile of that stroke as it lengthens and casts are extended in 5’-10’ increments as far as possible
- As soon as it gets out of shape – loops and/or effort profile – retreat as far as necessary to restore effortless delivery
- Repeat the process of gradually increasing casting distance rather than keep banging away at or near the point where form starts to deteriorate
Two things help me to regain form – 1) switching to dynamic rolls which accentuate late rotation and 2) switching to side casts which allow a full view of the stroke and fly line in both directions. Also for longer casts I sometimes just concentrate on carry and getting everything in order there without concern for accuracy and total distance on delivery.
Signs that form needs adjustment include casts that didn’t go as far they should have or failed to extend the leader. Crucially, any sense of undue effort (breaking out of the desired effort profile) to remove slack or compensate for inadequate extension are sure signs of technique shortcomings. Time to retreat and restore technique before recommencing slow increases of distance.
When I started 65′ – 70’ was about where the “problems” started. Now it’s more like 80’-85’. I aim and expect to get out to at least 90’ and, maybe, beyond. NB I’m not talking about maximum casting distance but the range within which effortless (graceful) form can be maintained.
Hero casts for maximum distance are absolutely forbidden because they guarantee the exertion of unnecessary and therefore unwanted effort.
I will update my page on Fly Casting Practice with the exercises listed above.
Fly Casting Movement: Effort as an Organising Idea for Control
Introduction
As a curious person I want to build my understanding of fly casting on solid ground. It remains a work in progress. As a metaphor I was recently attracted to the means by which a railway viaduct designed by Brunel was constructed over marshy ground. To support the structure they dug down through the soft mud until the bedrock was revealed and on that the stone piers were built. The body of popular knowledge about fly casting features a lot of wobbly and unscientific structures built on unfounded belief.
This site tracks my journey of knowledge construction down to the bedrock of mechanics then onwards and upwards to biomechanics, followed by sensorimotor learning Deviating from the construction metaphor, my journey was one of exploration which did not follow a planned route or blueprint but rather evolved simply as one thing leading to another. Mechanics equations don’t make casts. Biomechanical sequences are not self executing. Understanding sensorimotor learning is useful but not sufficient guidance for optimising how we acquire and refine casting movements. Teaching and Practice are likewise helpful in getting the movements right. My journey has been powered by inputs both from people I’ve talked with and from my own research which favours peer reviewed publications.
Still, however, I felt a need to better understand the personal, subjective experience of performing fly casting movements as opposed to observing those movements being performed by others or by me (on video) and trying to get better at doing them and teaching others to do them better. Learning is always a subjective experience.
Before I get into Effort as an organising idea here’s a very brief summary of the journey highlights so far.
- Newton’s second law of motion describes net Force applied to a fly line (mass) propelled (accelerated) in the intended direction of the cast. F=ma. Force is most efficiently applied in and with straight lines. Force applied in any direction other than the one intended is effectively opposed to and deducted from what we want to achieve. The essence of efficiently applying force to a fly line via a fly rod is to optimise net Force in the intended direction of the cast.
- A throwing action like fly casting essentially involves a biomechanical sequence of body bits from those close to our core (proximal) to those further away from it (distal). The bigger and more powerful muscles (proximal) are for good for gross motor skill and the smaller (distal) muscles are less powerful and better suited to fine motor skill.
- As our sensorimotor system acquires new movements we progress from the slow channel of cognitive control, through associative control and on to the fast channel of autonomous control. In other words we lay down new patterns of movement and as we repeat them the central nervous system relocates them from the slow and somewhat clunky channel of conscious thought to the faster and more fluid channel of unconscious performance. This is not a simple linear process as changes and refinements will require frequent returns to the slow channel before conscious thought becomes unnecessary. We crawl before we can walk before we can run. Repeat as necessary.
Neural Patterns of Familiar Movements
Evolution has taught our brains to save time (good for survival) in perceiving, thinking and acting by building and using patterns. For good reason, reflex actions like flinching, ducking or lifting a hand off a hot stove don’t require conscious thought. That’s the fast channel of sensorimotor control and reflexes unconsciously trigger the execution of established movement patterns.
At the conscious, cognitive level, we likewise build and use neural patterns. For example we recognise objects that fit established patterns. We know the difference between a cup and a beaker, a wine glass and a tumbler without thinking too long or deeply about it. That’s because we use patterns in perception as well as object recognition. Magicians use our patterns of perception to fool us with “slight of hand”. Actually, it’s slight of vision patterns and managed attention.
We also use patterns when we move voluntarily and for the same reason; it saves time. For example, imagine there is a bar in front of you (shouldn’t be too difficult) and on it is a glass milk shake beaker. We pick it up off the bar and raise it and draw it towards our face stopping at eye level. Then we put it back where it was. I’m guessing that if we see that it is empty our grip strength and how much force we use to move it as described will be assessed and executed without conscious thought. If we see that the beaker is brim full of milk we will slow down to avoid spillage and we will unconsciously use more force to grip, lift and move it. Now, imagine there is a trick added and the beaker looks to be full of milk but actually it’s full of polystyrene cleverly disguised as milk. What will happen? We will lift “too fast” and have to slow the movement down. The opposite would happen if we were tricked into underestimating the weight. We would then have to compensate for the unexpected heaviness of the beaker. We would adjust by speeding up our movement to reach the chosen rate of movement and we would do that by increasing the force applied.
Still with me? What I’m trying to demonstrate is that everyday movements are very familiar and we execute them somewhat unconsciously with pre-determined choices of which bits to move when, how fast, how far and with what force. Secondly when the movement feeds back something unexpected we are able to compensate. What is it that we subjectively experience when we make those adjustments? A change of effort. Too much effort and we reduce it to slow the movement down. Too little effort and we increase it to speed up the movement. Feedback facilitates effort adjustment which changes how we move.
Existing known patterns of movement feedforward to our body bits the commands to move. If feedback says “Whoops, too much or too little effort is being applied” we feedforward again to adjust the amount of effort to achieve the desired movement outcome. In my view and personal experience the expectation and apprehension of effort required organises how we execute a voluntary movement. Effort is applied force which effects the speed and often the range, of a familiar movement.
To illustrate this let’s take another example. (Humour me, ok?) Imagine you are sitting at a dinner table and the friend on your dominant side has left their plate unprotected. A fly enters the scene and you decide to shoo it away from your friend’s meal. Your movement, at your choice, can be slow and gentle or fast and aggressive. It can be somewhere in the middle of those extremes. Try pantomiming that shooing movement at all three different tempos.
Next, pay attention to your hand movement at the end of both a gentle and an aggressive shooing action. If you are like me the hand will hardly move at the wrist with a gentle movement and with an aggressive movement it will extend vigorously. In between the hand movement is in between. For me and probably for both of us, we can now see how the chosen speed of the movement (driven by effort) unconsciously changes the range of hand movement at the end of the movement sequence.
As we executed a familiar movement at varying rates we demonstrated that we are moving according to established neural patterns. To emphasise the point try finishing a slow shooing wave with the hand movement of a fast wave. Do the opposite – fast wave with slow wave hand movement (even harder to do was it not). You will probably notice that it requires conscious change which makes the movement feel a bit strange – because, of course, you are deviating from an established movement pattern otherwise executed without thinking about it.
What has this got to do with fly casting? Ok, fly casting is supposed to be a tricky new set of movements we have to learn from scratch. Say we change the milk shake movement to finish it by throwing the contents of the beaker back over our shoulder. No real problem eh? So for my money that action is a lot like the backcast of the basic or foundation stroke. Fly shooing off your friend’s plate is actually a lot like making the backcast of a side cast. We have all heard and used other movement analogies like painting the ceiling or flicking water off the brush. These work and resonate because they are familiar and we can do them without much trepidation. Why not fly casting, at least at the basic level?
Overpowering – Cause, Consequence or Both?
What are the most common casting “faults” I see when I’m out and about? Over powering and over rotation with, in my revised view, the latter being largely an effect of the former. I’d be surprised if most casting teachers didn’t say these were the most common problems their students present with. Not talking about absolute beginners here but more about folks who can cast at least well enough to catch a fish or two.
Most casters use too much force and I note in passing that using just enough force is still part of my learning journey. How much is too much? More than is required to complete the cast as intended. So, why do we do it? Let’s be a bit more specific. What is/are the cause or causes of over powering and over rotation? My suggestion is that we over power very often in an attempt to compensate for “technique issues” connected with or even caused by, over powering. If there is major slack in the line after a back cast we weren’t watching then we will probably speed up the forward cast in an attempt to get in touch with (get feedback from) the line. Maybe the poor backcast was due at least in part to the poor forward cast that preceded it, one that didn’t extend properly. The caster is thus caught in a vicious cycle. Over rotation might well be part of that cycle as we rotate sooner, further and faster to try and cure the inefficiency thereby adding to the inefficiency. A fast movement pattern is being used when a slow to medium movement pattern would be a much better choice in terms of control and therefore efficiency. Effort is the subjective experience of applying net Force in the intended direction of the cast.
Faced with such problems teachers could start giving instructions (to ourselves or others) to reduce the stroke speed and change the movement sequence by delaying rotation or telling the caster to use less wrist and more of something else and so on ad finitum. Alternatively, we could pay more attention to causation and less to effects. We could, for example, use the triangle method in conjunction with PUALDs in both directions. The pause between backcast and forward cast gives us time to think and consciously adjust things. We could get the caster to lay out their line out straight so that when they started to move the fly line started to move. The caster will then be able to see what is happening with the line as well to feel the line as a weight/resistance. They will notice the difference between a slack line and a straight line from a more successful cast that fully extended. Feedback will be received from two sources, sight and resistance. This would constitute a major advance on virtually no useful feedback at all. By “useful” I mean feedback which facilitates adjustment of movement to meet the desired acceleration of the fly line – subjectively, an adjustment in effort.
Learning and Change
The caster at this point, aided by a lot more sensory feedback, might be able to start moving more slowly and (therefore) smoothly. This would be learning by discovery instead of by direct instruction. We could facilitate the process, if required, by making suggestions like “Maybe try starting a bit slower” or even “See if you can keep the hand/wrist action until later in your stroke and you might make your loops a bit narrower”.
Slower movement is easier to control. Smoother movement is a demonstration of increased control. Casting more efficiently means achieving more distance and better accuracy from less effort – ie applied force. We increase stroke length with cast length to lessen the force and speed required for execution of the movement. Line speed is produced by force applied over a distance (or for a time). A shorter faster stroke demands more effort for the cast distance than when we cast for the same distance using a longer slower/easier stroke.
In varying amounts of time casters will probably start to notice the benefits of using less effort. As their neural patterns change and a different planned effort is matched to a changed expectation of effort and then by results it will, you know, start to “feel better”. Change is, indeed, the hard part and change requires commitment and persistence but, for me, more understanding of and attention to, cause and effect in casting inefficiently (“poor technique”) will work better than just relentlessly picking at “faults” one after another.
But, I hear you say, what about other faults like tracking or tailing loops? Well I’m not saying over powering is the only issue but I will offer that it is a lot easier to cast in straight lines, back and forward, if you aren’t heaving – using unnecessary force. Tails come from lumpy force application which, I might suggest, is likely to be caused by over powering at some point in the stroke; effort profile needs a tweak. Creep (starting too soon) is said to be a cause of tails. Why, I would ask, do you think casters feel they need to hurry?
Conclusion
An organising idea is like the hub of a wheel with spokes connecting to other related ideas laid out around the circumference. I like organising ideas – a lot. When we cast we apply force to accelerate a mass – of our body parts, the rod and the line. We need to do that with optimal efficiency which will come from maximising net Force in the intended direction of the cast.
Casting is a throwing movement and that is done most efficiently from using the biomechanical sequence that time, evolution, and anatomy have bequeathed to us. It’s a movement we learn and as it becomes more familiar neural patterns are formed, refined, entrenched and moved to different parts of our brains so the movement is performed without thinking about it. For familiar movements we develop patterns which include instructions for what to move in what order, how far and how fast. That’s how come we can pick up a milk shake or shoo off flies without a lot of thought and with a range of choices in the tempo of the movement about to be made. Further, we can use sensory feedback and even conscious thought to adjust our movements.
Using the triangle method, with PUALDs in both directions we can get more and better feedback. This is one example of something we can use to enhance feedback and facilitate change to the neural patterns we have developed. They are, for each and all of us, our patterns and using them to perform our movements is necessarily a subjective experience.
Got a problem with over powered casting and over rotation? Consider the chain of causation. Is it something like this? Too much slack negatively affects feedback which leads to going too fast which leads to over rotation. You could try slowing down or using less wrist or translating more and rotating later etc etc. This is the objective instructional approach. Alternately you could obtain visual feedback, see what it going wrong and adjust your movements until there is less slack and better turnover with less effort. This approach considers the subjective experience and encourages self discovery which will probably result in better and more lasting learning.
Converting a mechanics equation into a subjective movement experience via biomechanical sequences performed with sensorimotor control applies theoretically to all voluntary movements. To make any voluntary movement we have to consciously and/or unconsciously chose which bits to move in what order, how far and how fast. Familiar voluntary movements, like shooing flies or fly casting, are regulated, essentially or at least significantly, by the allowance for effort which forms a component of our neural patterns for making those movements. I suggest that managing effort so as to alter those patterns, together with adjustment as required by feedback, is pretty central to learning how to cast more efficiently. Focussed, purposeful practice informed, shaped and directed by this knowledge is the key to improved efficiency.
The Curious Fly Caster 
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