*** This post is still in development and will be substantially changed during the discussions that follow below. At the moment it's just a collection of stuff that hopefully people might find useful, it will get more organised as we go on.***
If you have any interesting information/vides please contribute.
Come back regularly!
You can't understand casting without doing it - a lot. But that doesn't mean you can't educate yourself about the theory of it, listen to what expert casters say and watch how they do it.
Before we start, let it be known that the site...
www.sexyloops.com
... Is the place that contains more information about casting than anywhere else on this planet or any others that may yet be found. It's populated by a bunch of extraordinarily talented and enthusiasticnerds people that have been responsible for a very large part of the development and understanding of fly casting and learning.
What follows is largely a tribute to what Paul Arden and others has achieved with that site, and, more than is really polite, cribs from it extensively.
Casting Instructional Videos
Paul Arden at SexyLoops
The ultimate fly bum, Paul Arden manages to make a living from fly fishing and rod making (his is the rather eccentrically named Hot Torpedo brand). He's a great instructor and caster. Currently living on a boat in Malaysia, Paul claims to be averaging 330+ days per year fishing and is well on his way to his target of 10,000 fishing days.
Paul Arden Video Casting Masterclasses
https://www.sexyloops.com/flycast/
Simon Gawseworth at RIO
My other favourite casting instructor, often thought of as a double-handed rod casting guy but can cast everything well. He's written two excellent books on both single and double-handed casting (tho' the single-handed book is out of print). Currently works for RIO.
RIO Casting Videos (click on the "How to" Video dropdown)
https://www.rioproducts.com/learn/videos
Joan Wulff at Winston
Included here not just because she's literally a world class caster and instructor but also to demonstrate that physical power is not what makes a great caster.
Joan Wulff Casting Videos
https://winstonrods.com/videos/instructional-videos/
Peter Kutzer at Orvis
Orvis uses Peter to create a series of useful and straightforward casting videos.
Peter Kutzer - Orvis
There's also a series of Peter's videos on Youtube. Look to the right of this page under "Mix - The Orvis company.
Jim Green
This is an ancient video of Jim Green who designed rods for Fenwick and Sage back in the transition from Fibreglass to Carbon. It's here because he describes and demonstrates the overhead cast really well.
Doug Swisher
He's here because I couldn't resist the name. He lands 3lb browns in his left hand whilst holding his rod in the other. He also apparently has an 'educated, micro-second wrist' - and some interesting casts in his advanced video.
Theory
Better start with Bill Gammel's 5 Essentials as they've been incredibly influential in the teaching and development of fly casting.
1. The Straight Line Path (SLP)
The rod tip must travel along a straight line when viewed from the side and from above.
2. Varying the casting arc
Vary the size of the casting arc according to the amount of line outside the rod tip.
3. The Pause
The pause between each cast to allow the line to straighten must get longer as the line gets longer (correct timing). Learn to vary the timing and the stroke length to maintain the straight-line path of the rod tip.
4. Correct application of power
The power must be applied at the proper place, at the proper time. (Smooth acceleration to an abrupt stop.)
5. Removing slack
Slack must be kept to a minimum.
It's worth pointing out that the 5 Es aren't laws and they're not totally literal. For example the casting arc when viewed from the side can never be a dead straight line, but a SLP is something we try to get as near to for as long as possible.
There are also casts that we make that deliberately break the straight line path to achieve a particular goal eg steeple cast, pendulum cast, Belgium cast.
We can deliberately overpower a cast too, eg the curve cast. We can even deliberately create a tailing loop to collapse a cast. But you get the idea; get the basic cast right first.
If you want to see someone breaking the SLP into small pieces yet chucking a line a long way:
Long article on casting by Paul Arden
Covering pretty much everything
Loading a rod and levers and springs
People commonly speak about loading a rod; they say that they can feel the rod load when casting. It's a very common word and you'll see it used in most magazines, books and videos and whenever people meet to talk about casting.
Load is a straightforward term meaning to apply a force to something; in this case our rod. We feel the load we're applying force to in our arm as a resistance or heaviness. We feel the rod bend into the cast. It provides a very useful feedback loop for training ourselves into applying the force at the right moment and with the right amount.
But some years ago it was not a simple statement to say that we load a rod. There were many rows and friendships lost over the word 'load' and in some circles it's become a trigger word; a little bit toxic. So I'd better just explain why so that people don't fall into the same ephalump trap. The wounds have not yet healed.
The problem seems to be that some people imagined the rod to be only a long spring; loading it (ie applying force) stored energy in the rod and stopping the rod sharply released that energy, propelling the line forward (or backward).
A spring stores and releases energy - compressing a spring or stretching elastic fills them with potential energy just dying to be released. To use a catapult you stretch the elastic, storing energy, and when you release it you watch the stone fly forward using the energy you stored in it. But the bow and arrow cast is, in fact, the only example of the rod being used entirely like a spring.
The other tribe believed the rod to be only a lever. In the case of a lever, the force (load) we apply by the hand rotating a small distance, makes the tip of the rod move a relatively large distance. Because the tip moves further than the hand but in the same period of time it is forced to move faster accelerating the line.
This is called mechanical advantage and it's why dog walkers use those long ball launchers and why medieval trebuchets can lob a boulder over a castle's ramparts. Up to a point, the longer the arm of the lever, the greater the distance or weight that can be thrown. For a single-handed rod, that point seems to be around 9' to 9'6" in expert hands. Double-handed rods change the game because the two-handed stroke can exert more rotational force for longer and so also throw heavier and longer.
We now know that the casting stroke uses both lever and spring mechanics during the cast with the lever contributing by far the most, particularly in shorter casts.
There's some evidence that the spring contributes more as longer casts are made - perhaps 80:20, lever:spring. Here's the source paper.
So lever wins by a long margin, but spring is present and very necessary - it adds a little extra umph to the cast at the right place (the end) and it smooths out the cast protecting our joints from sharp shocks.
There's nothing wrong with the term "load", we just need to understand its generalised meaning.
The End (fat chance!)
Soon Lee - Fly Casting Loop Dynamics
This is an excellent series of short (5 mins) animated videos of how the rod tip and line moves in real life. He demonstrates that the Straight Line Path (SLP) is a rather more complicated thing than we thought and what is actually happening in the stop.
1. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Introduction to Loops
2. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Understanding Your Fly Cast
3. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - The Legacy of a Definition
4. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Ist SLP Phantom
5. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - SLP And Essentials
6. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Understanding Loop Dynamics
7. Convex Tip Path
Analysing the casting stroke
Great paper comparing expert, intermediate and beginner's casting strokes using an instrument that measures the speed of the rod. Figure 5 below shows how metronomic the expert's casting is, but also how the back cast is a mirror image of the forward cast.
Miscellaneous Online Information
Fly Fishers International, the US instructors' association, publish a quarterly online magazine called The Loop that generally has a few good articles in it.
The Loop Magazine
https://www.flyfishersinternational...ing-Instructor-Certification/The-Loop-Journal
Mark Herron - The Curious Fly Caster
Mark has written a really excellent series of artcles on the physics and biomechanical aspects of fly casting. He's done a lot of scholarly research and rendered it into (mostly) understandable chunks for the non-expert. He also happens to be a member of this forum.
https://thecuriousflycaster.com/articles/physics-for-fly-casting-the-einstein-series-5/
Casting Faults
Good casters can deliberately use techniques that are normally called faults to produce particular kinds of 'presentation' casts. So to be clear, for the purposes of what follows, to be a casting fault, the caster must have made the movement unintentionally and the cast must have been the poorer for it.
(If you're doing a a cast unintentionally that turns out to be a corker, you may have invented a new one and we want to hear about it!)
Definitions
Also to be clear, in order to understand what faults in casting are it's necessary to define terms. I'll (mostly) be using the IFFF's definitions found here:
Unfortunately, like much of fly fishing, there isn't universal acceptance of these definitions and Paul Arden and his associates at Sexyloops have an alternative view which is worth a look.
There is also a discussion about the continued fight over definitions and its history here:
Creep
Creep according to the FFI is "Rod rotation during the pause in the direction of the next cast."
(You'll find a sketch in the link above from the FFI.) If you watch Simon Gawseworth's video at 4 minutes in, you'll see him demonstrate it and hear him describe it as a "nemesis" for the fly caster.
The effect of creep is to shorten the length of the next cast. Consequently the next cast either lacks power and fails or, if the caster attempts to compensate by punching the cast forward, a tailing loop can result (see below).
Simon actually demonstrates translational creep (the hand moving forward horizontally) but I think most instructors say that ANY movement forward - translation or rotation (the hand turning the rod in an arc) - during the pause in the casting stroke is creep.
Unfortunately, according to FFI definitions, when the forward movement is translational it can also be called drag, not creep.
This seems unnecessarily complicated and confused to me especially as a similar movement in the direction of the unfolding loop is called drift (rotational OR translational.) But I guess they have their reasons.
The cure for creep
First it has to be identified, which might not be easy without somebody that knows what they're doing looking at you - remember you're making this movement unconsciously. But once identified, the cure is to force yourself to very deliberately pause, maybe exaggerate and do it for longer. You'll need someone watching you. One instructor tells her students to shout "DON"T MOVE" at the pause. Sounds like it could work.
If you google cures for creep you'll see many of the world's best casters recommending using the movement called drift (as above) in order to compensate for it. I don't think that this is terribly good advice - he says not being one the world's best casters, but hear me out.
First off, drift is a fairly advanced move used mostly by distance casters. What they're doing is making the cast, stopping the rod, then during the pause as the loop unfurls, moving their rod a little further back and upwards. This increases the width of the next cast which is valuable if you want more power and distance. But what if you don't?
Second, the object is to cure the fault, not leave it in place and cover it up with another action. Learning to stop and stay stopped is so important it's worth getting right I reckon. You can add drift later if you want to. (In my view.)
Tailing Loops
If creep is a fault you don't know you have, tailing loops are a fault you very definitely know ALL about when you make one because they tend to make a mess of your leader.
A formal definition of a tailing loop is where the line on top of the loop dips and crosses the bottom of the loop twice (ie the fly leg of the line crosses the rod leg twice.) It looks like this:
I suspect the definition has the requirement to cross the rod leg twice to distinguish it from the perfectly ok cast where the fly leg has sagged on the backcast and it coming up from under rod leg.
But that formal definition isn't terribly useful because a tail doesn't have to cross twice to be a problem. A tail that is simply a dip in the fly leg can escalate into something big enough to destroy the cast. These small dips are usually called tailing tendencies.
If the legs of the fly line collide, you get a loop that falls in a pile, often a tangle and occasionally a knot in the leader called a wind knot. How a wind knot forms is interesting in a nerdy way, but I've never seen it explained so I'll add my version of it later.
Tailing loops have been researched to death, so best just read Sexyloops' explanations.
But not all demonstrations of tailing loops actually are tailing loops and it's bothered me for a while that when I've seen people throw them, they looked quite artificial to me. Their casts don't look like my casts when I tail and get into a mess. Turns out I'm not alone:
Anyway, this has also been murdered at Sexyloops. Unfortunately it's not yet properly dead
How "Wind" Knots are Formed
It ain't the wind.
I've looked for a good explanation of how the knots are made but not found one; most account just say that they're caused by tailing loops but not how. So here's my best effort.
In the classic tailing loop the flyline leg crosses the rod leg of the fly line twice. But just once would do.
For that action to create an overhand knot in the line two other things have to happen:
1. one part of the tailing loop must be on one side of the fly leg and one on the other. ie the fly leg and the rod leg of the fly line have crossed. In a knot that's called an elbow
2. somehow the fly must have entered the crossed-leg loop to make the knot - the 'working end' has to pass through the 'elbow'. A loop that has simply crossed/collided would make a mess but not necessarily form an overhand knot.
For 2. to happen the fly must have travelled faster than the crossed loop so as to enter it and then exit it, forming the knot. But the fly can never be moving faster than the loop ahead of it, because it's the loop that's 'towing' the fly. (This is contentious, what's actually happening at the loop is complicated, but let's go with the analogy for a while.)
The fly can't go faster than the loop unless the crossed loop has slowed down. eg. Car, A, is towing Car B and both are doing 30mph. If Car A suddenly brakes and slows down to 10mph and Car B doesn't also brake, Car B will carry on at 30mph until it either collides with car A or overtakes it.
And it seems that that is what is happening; it's the collision of the fly line legs that slows the fly line in the air, and the momentum that is already in the fly carries it onwards straight through the slowing collided loop. Shazam.
It's probable that there's more than one mechanism that creates the knot. Another likely one is that when the collision has happened the fly drops onto the mess of leader and line lying on the water, and sinks through it, creating the knot which tightens when false casted.
And just on occasion, the wind might blow the fly into the loop.
Weird Casts
Tongariro Roll Cats
Just plonking this here for now
Teaching & Casting Organisations
I was surprised to see how lacking in content both of the UK Instructor's Associations are. What little there is appears to be behind the members' enclosure but even there, there's not much of interest (at least on the GAIA site, I haven't seen behind the curtain of AAPGAI). It seems a missed opportunity. Anyway, I include them here as they are good at pointing you to qualified instructors.
(btw why do we have two instructors' association? They're both tiny organisations doing exactly the same thing. If they got together they'd have half the costs but twice the revenue and be able to do more for their members.)
Game Angling Instructors' Association (UK), GAIA
https://gameanglinginstructors.co.uk
Association of Advanced Professional Game Angling Instructors (UK), AAPGAI
https://www.aapgai.co.uk
The Americans put on a better show:
Fly Fishing International (USA), FFI
https://www.flyfishersinternational.org/
Other organisations of interest
British Fly Casting Club
https://www.thebfcc.co.uk
Scottish Game Anglers' Association
http://www.sana.org.uk
International Casting Sport Federation
The Fly Casting Institute
Recommended Study Material
Instructors recommended by forum members
Robin Elwes
Www.learn2yfish.com for contact details
Areas: London, Reading (sports fish) and the Test
AAPGAI single handed master
double handed master.
Been Farlows main casting instructor since 1988
Recommended by Whingeing Pom
Parked for the moment
If you have any interesting information/vides please contribute.
Come back regularly!
You can't understand casting without doing it - a lot. But that doesn't mean you can't educate yourself about the theory of it, listen to what expert casters say and watch how they do it.
Before we start, let it be known that the site...
www.sexyloops.com
... Is the place that contains more information about casting than anywhere else on this planet or any others that may yet be found. It's populated by a bunch of extraordinarily talented and enthusiastic
What follows is largely a tribute to what Paul Arden and others has achieved with that site, and, more than is really polite, cribs from it extensively.
Casting Instructional Videos
Paul Arden at SexyLoops
The ultimate fly bum, Paul Arden manages to make a living from fly fishing and rod making (his is the rather eccentrically named Hot Torpedo brand). He's a great instructor and caster. Currently living on a boat in Malaysia, Paul claims to be averaging 330+ days per year fishing and is well on his way to his target of 10,000 fishing days.
Paul Arden Video Casting Masterclasses
https://www.sexyloops.com/flycast/
Simon Gawseworth at RIO
My other favourite casting instructor, often thought of as a double-handed rod casting guy but can cast everything well. He's written two excellent books on both single and double-handed casting (tho' the single-handed book is out of print). Currently works for RIO.
RIO Casting Videos (click on the "How to" Video dropdown)
https://www.rioproducts.com/learn/videos
Joan Wulff at Winston
Included here not just because she's literally a world class caster and instructor but also to demonstrate that physical power is not what makes a great caster.
Joan Wulff Casting Videos
https://winstonrods.com/videos/instructional-videos/
Peter Kutzer at Orvis
Orvis uses Peter to create a series of useful and straightforward casting videos.
Peter Kutzer - Orvis
There's also a series of Peter's videos on Youtube. Look to the right of this page under "Mix - The Orvis company.
Jim Green
This is an ancient video of Jim Green who designed rods for Fenwick and Sage back in the transition from Fibreglass to Carbon. It's here because he describes and demonstrates the overhead cast really well.
Doug Swisher
He's here because I couldn't resist the name. He lands 3lb browns in his left hand whilst holding his rod in the other. He also apparently has an 'educated, micro-second wrist' - and some interesting casts in his advanced video.
Theory
Better start with Bill Gammel's 5 Essentials as they've been incredibly influential in the teaching and development of fly casting.
1. The Straight Line Path (SLP)
The rod tip must travel along a straight line when viewed from the side and from above.
2. Varying the casting arc
Vary the size of the casting arc according to the amount of line outside the rod tip.
3. The Pause
The pause between each cast to allow the line to straighten must get longer as the line gets longer (correct timing). Learn to vary the timing and the stroke length to maintain the straight-line path of the rod tip.
4. Correct application of power
The power must be applied at the proper place, at the proper time. (Smooth acceleration to an abrupt stop.)
5. Removing slack
Slack must be kept to a minimum.
It's worth pointing out that the 5 Es aren't laws and they're not totally literal. For example the casting arc when viewed from the side can never be a dead straight line, but a SLP is something we try to get as near to for as long as possible.
There are also casts that we make that deliberately break the straight line path to achieve a particular goal eg steeple cast, pendulum cast, Belgium cast.
We can deliberately overpower a cast too, eg the curve cast. We can even deliberately create a tailing loop to collapse a cast. But you get the idea; get the basic cast right first.
If you want to see someone breaking the SLP into small pieces yet chucking a line a long way:
Long article on casting by Paul Arden
Covering pretty much everything
Loading a rod and levers and springs
People commonly speak about loading a rod; they say that they can feel the rod load when casting. It's a very common word and you'll see it used in most magazines, books and videos and whenever people meet to talk about casting.
Load is a straightforward term meaning to apply a force to something; in this case our rod. We feel the load we're applying force to in our arm as a resistance or heaviness. We feel the rod bend into the cast. It provides a very useful feedback loop for training ourselves into applying the force at the right moment and with the right amount.
But some years ago it was not a simple statement to say that we load a rod. There were many rows and friendships lost over the word 'load' and in some circles it's become a trigger word; a little bit toxic. So I'd better just explain why so that people don't fall into the same ephalump trap. The wounds have not yet healed.
The problem seems to be that some people imagined the rod to be only a long spring; loading it (ie applying force) stored energy in the rod and stopping the rod sharply released that energy, propelling the line forward (or backward).
A spring stores and releases energy - compressing a spring or stretching elastic fills them with potential energy just dying to be released. To use a catapult you stretch the elastic, storing energy, and when you release it you watch the stone fly forward using the energy you stored in it. But the bow and arrow cast is, in fact, the only example of the rod being used entirely like a spring.
The other tribe believed the rod to be only a lever. In the case of a lever, the force (load) we apply by the hand rotating a small distance, makes the tip of the rod move a relatively large distance. Because the tip moves further than the hand but in the same period of time it is forced to move faster accelerating the line.
This is called mechanical advantage and it's why dog walkers use those long ball launchers and why medieval trebuchets can lob a boulder over a castle's ramparts. Up to a point, the longer the arm of the lever, the greater the distance or weight that can be thrown. For a single-handed rod, that point seems to be around 9' to 9'6" in expert hands. Double-handed rods change the game because the two-handed stroke can exert more rotational force for longer and so also throw heavier and longer.
We now know that the casting stroke uses both lever and spring mechanics during the cast with the lever contributing by far the most, particularly in shorter casts.
There's some evidence that the spring contributes more as longer casts are made - perhaps 80:20, lever:spring. Here's the source paper.
So lever wins by a long margin, but spring is present and very necessary - it adds a little extra umph to the cast at the right place (the end) and it smooths out the cast protecting our joints from sharp shocks.
There's nothing wrong with the term "load", we just need to understand its generalised meaning.
The End (fat chance!)
Soon Lee - Fly Casting Loop Dynamics
This is an excellent series of short (5 mins) animated videos of how the rod tip and line moves in real life. He demonstrates that the Straight Line Path (SLP) is a rather more complicated thing than we thought and what is actually happening in the stop.
1. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Introduction to Loops
2. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Understanding Your Fly Cast
3. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - The Legacy of a Definition
4. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Ist SLP Phantom
5. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - SLP And Essentials
6. Fly Casting Loops Dynamics - Understanding Loop Dynamics
7. Convex Tip Path
Analysing the casting stroke
Great paper comparing expert, intermediate and beginner's casting strokes using an instrument that measures the speed of the rod. Figure 5 below shows how metronomic the expert's casting is, but also how the back cast is a mirror image of the forward cast.
Miscellaneous Online Information
Fly Fishers International, the US instructors' association, publish a quarterly online magazine called The Loop that generally has a few good articles in it.
The Loop Magazine
https://www.flyfishersinternational...ing-Instructor-Certification/The-Loop-Journal
Mark Herron - The Curious Fly Caster
Mark has written a really excellent series of artcles on the physics and biomechanical aspects of fly casting. He's done a lot of scholarly research and rendered it into (mostly) understandable chunks for the non-expert. He also happens to be a member of this forum.
https://thecuriousflycaster.com/articles/physics-for-fly-casting-the-einstein-series-5/
Article about Casting stylesCasting Faults
Good casters can deliberately use techniques that are normally called faults to produce particular kinds of 'presentation' casts. So to be clear, for the purposes of what follows, to be a casting fault, the caster must have made the movement unintentionally and the cast must have been the poorer for it.
(If you're doing a a cast unintentionally that turns out to be a corker, you may have invented a new one and we want to hear about it!)
Definitions
Also to be clear, in order to understand what faults in casting are it's necessary to define terms. I'll (mostly) be using the IFFF's definitions found here:
Unfortunately, like much of fly fishing, there isn't universal acceptance of these definitions and Paul Arden and his associates at Sexyloops have an alternative view which is worth a look.
There is also a discussion about the continued fight over definitions and its history here:
Creep
Creep according to the FFI is "Rod rotation during the pause in the direction of the next cast."
(You'll find a sketch in the link above from the FFI.) If you watch Simon Gawseworth's video at 4 minutes in, you'll see him demonstrate it and hear him describe it as a "nemesis" for the fly caster.
The effect of creep is to shorten the length of the next cast. Consequently the next cast either lacks power and fails or, if the caster attempts to compensate by punching the cast forward, a tailing loop can result (see below).
Simon actually demonstrates translational creep (the hand moving forward horizontally) but I think most instructors say that ANY movement forward - translation or rotation (the hand turning the rod in an arc) - during the pause in the casting stroke is creep.
Unfortunately, according to FFI definitions, when the forward movement is translational it can also be called drag, not creep.
This seems unnecessarily complicated and confused to me especially as a similar movement in the direction of the unfolding loop is called drift (rotational OR translational.) But I guess they have their reasons.
The cure for creep
First it has to be identified, which might not be easy without somebody that knows what they're doing looking at you - remember you're making this movement unconsciously. But once identified, the cure is to force yourself to very deliberately pause, maybe exaggerate and do it for longer. You'll need someone watching you. One instructor tells her students to shout "DON"T MOVE" at the pause. Sounds like it could work.
If you google cures for creep you'll see many of the world's best casters recommending using the movement called drift (as above) in order to compensate for it. I don't think that this is terribly good advice - he says not being one the world's best casters, but hear me out.
First off, drift is a fairly advanced move used mostly by distance casters. What they're doing is making the cast, stopping the rod, then during the pause as the loop unfurls, moving their rod a little further back and upwards. This increases the width of the next cast which is valuable if you want more power and distance. But what if you don't?
Second, the object is to cure the fault, not leave it in place and cover it up with another action. Learning to stop and stay stopped is so important it's worth getting right I reckon. You can add drift later if you want to. (In my view.)
Tailing Loops
If creep is a fault you don't know you have, tailing loops are a fault you very definitely know ALL about when you make one because they tend to make a mess of your leader.
A formal definition of a tailing loop is where the line on top of the loop dips and crosses the bottom of the loop twice (ie the fly leg of the line crosses the rod leg twice.) It looks like this:
I suspect the definition has the requirement to cross the rod leg twice to distinguish it from the perfectly ok cast where the fly leg has sagged on the backcast and it coming up from under rod leg.
But that formal definition isn't terribly useful because a tail doesn't have to cross twice to be a problem. A tail that is simply a dip in the fly leg can escalate into something big enough to destroy the cast. These small dips are usually called tailing tendencies.
If the legs of the fly line collide, you get a loop that falls in a pile, often a tangle and occasionally a knot in the leader called a wind knot. How a wind knot forms is interesting in a nerdy way, but I've never seen it explained so I'll add my version of it later.
Tailing loops have been researched to death, so best just read Sexyloops' explanations.
But not all demonstrations of tailing loops actually are tailing loops and it's bothered me for a while that when I've seen people throw them, they looked quite artificial to me. Their casts don't look like my casts when I tail and get into a mess. Turns out I'm not alone:
Anyway, this has also been murdered at Sexyloops. Unfortunately it's not yet properly dead
How "Wind" Knots are Formed
It ain't the wind.
I've looked for a good explanation of how the knots are made but not found one; most account just say that they're caused by tailing loops but not how. So here's my best effort.
In the classic tailing loop the flyline leg crosses the rod leg of the fly line twice. But just once would do.
For that action to create an overhand knot in the line two other things have to happen:
1. one part of the tailing loop must be on one side of the fly leg and one on the other. ie the fly leg and the rod leg of the fly line have crossed. In a knot that's called an elbow
2. somehow the fly must have entered the crossed-leg loop to make the knot - the 'working end' has to pass through the 'elbow'. A loop that has simply crossed/collided would make a mess but not necessarily form an overhand knot.
For 2. to happen the fly must have travelled faster than the crossed loop so as to enter it and then exit it, forming the knot. But the fly can never be moving faster than the loop ahead of it, because it's the loop that's 'towing' the fly. (This is contentious, what's actually happening at the loop is complicated, but let's go with the analogy for a while.)
The fly can't go faster than the loop unless the crossed loop has slowed down. eg. Car, A, is towing Car B and both are doing 30mph. If Car A suddenly brakes and slows down to 10mph and Car B doesn't also brake, Car B will carry on at 30mph until it either collides with car A or overtakes it.
And it seems that that is what is happening; it's the collision of the fly line legs that slows the fly line in the air, and the momentum that is already in the fly carries it onwards straight through the slowing collided loop. Shazam.
It's probable that there's more than one mechanism that creates the knot. Another likely one is that when the collision has happened the fly drops onto the mess of leader and line lying on the water, and sinks through it, creating the knot which tightens when false casted.
And just on occasion, the wind might blow the fly into the loop.
Weird Casts
Tongariro Roll Cats
Just plonking this here for now
Teaching & Casting Organisations
I was surprised to see how lacking in content both of the UK Instructor's Associations are. What little there is appears to be behind the members' enclosure but even there, there's not much of interest (at least on the GAIA site, I haven't seen behind the curtain of AAPGAI). It seems a missed opportunity. Anyway, I include them here as they are good at pointing you to qualified instructors.
(btw why do we have two instructors' association? They're both tiny organisations doing exactly the same thing. If they got together they'd have half the costs but twice the revenue and be able to do more for their members.)
Game Angling Instructors' Association (UK), GAIA
https://gameanglinginstructors.co.uk
Association of Advanced Professional Game Angling Instructors (UK), AAPGAI
https://www.aapgai.co.uk
The Americans put on a better show:
Fly Fishing International (USA), FFI
https://www.flyfishersinternational.org/
Other organisations of interest
British Fly Casting Club
https://www.thebfcc.co.uk
Scottish Game Anglers' Association
http://www.sana.org.uk
International Casting Sport Federation
The Fly Casting Institute
Preparation for the GAIC and APGAI AssessmentsRecommended Study Material
Books | Videos & DVDs |
Joan Wulff: Fly Casting Techniques Casting Accuracy Lefty Kreh: Advanced Fly-Casting Solving Fly-Casting Problems Modern Fly-Casting Methods Longer Fly-Casting Saltwater Fly-Casting Techniques Mel Krieger: The Essence of Fly-Casting Jason Borger: The Nature of Fly-Casting Ed Jawarowski: The Cast Trouble shooting the Cast G.V. Roberts: Master the Cast Macauley Lord: Flycasting Handbook Mac Brown: Casting Angles Al Kyte: Orvis Guide to better Flycasting Fly Fishing Simple to Sophisticated Simon Gawesworth: Single Handed Spey Casting Spey casting Hugh Falkus: Salmon Fishing Sea Trout Fishing Malcolm Greenhalgh: Fishing Flies A Guide to Flies from around the World. Oliver Edwards: Flytyers Masterclass Darrel Martin: Micropatterns Jeremy Lucas: Tactical Fly Fishing | Joan Wulff's Dynamics of Fly Casting Fly Casting with Lefty Kreh Mel Krieger: The Essence of Spey Casting Flycasting Faults and Fixes Michael Evans: Trout Fishing and Fly Casting Spey Casting and Salmon Fishing Rio Modern Spey Casting Scott McKenzie's Spey Casting Masterclass Ally Gowans: Spey Casting Made Easy Oliver Edwards; Essential Skills series Essential Patterns series Malcolm Greenhalgh: Fly Tying and Fly Fishing Masterclass series Gary Borger: 15 Most Common Casting Errors Doug Swisher: Advanced Fly Casting |
Instructors recommended by forum members
Robin Elwes
Www.learn2yfish.com for contact details
Areas: London, Reading (sports fish) and the Test
AAPGAI single handed master
double handed master.
Been Farlows main casting instructor since 1988
Recommended by Whingeing Pom
Parked for the moment