I have experienced a couple of things lately that I just wanted to pass on. One is the Mill House podcast. I just have to say that I think Andy Mills is doing a wonderful job capturing these interviews with fly fishing greats. These people won’t be around forever, but thanks to Andy we will have these interviews far into the future. I enjoy the interviews as a fly fisherman but they are more than just fly fishing info. I know that because my non-fly fishing wife will sit down and watch and listen with me. She seems to enjoy the stories that reveal history about people, Florida and the environment. I enjoy all of that plus I am picking up some very useful information, especially about tarpon fishing.
The second thing is something that I picked up from that poster child of fly casting, Paul Arden. The man lives and breathes fly casting and when I go out to practice I always have some little tidbit of his ringing in my ears. The latest is to always have a target on the back cast. I wasn’t really sure about this as I don’t use an open stance and can’t look behind me. I cast facing forward trying to keep the integrity of the plane, by not twisting the rod with my wrist. I let gravity and inertia do the tracking. I won’t go into any more detail but I couldn’t help but start thinking about what he said with respect to plane. How do you draw a straight line? Establish two points and connect them. So I thought I would establish a virtual back cast target, in my head, after looking at the target. I look at the target and just in my head I imagine where that back cast target should be and I try to “hit it” with my back cast. Since I’ve started this, my accuracy has gotten better.
It only makes sense. For too long I was trying to steer the rod to the target, then I finally realized I needed to establish the plane before I made the cast and I started doing that by pointing the rod at the target BEFORE I made my back cast. My accuracy went way up. Now I’m improving on that by trying to establish a back cast target. It’s just one more enhancement which helps to establish and maintain the integrity of the plane.
Well that’s enough, I’ve had my say.
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