Walter & Group...
[GH] Sometimes I'll go off topic for a message or two when I feel it is appropriate. A short while ago, in August, we had a series of messages on MENDS. Aitor Coteron was away at the time. Now he sends an instructive message too valuable to ignore. The piece he submits had also been sent to sexyloops.com :-
Hi Gordy,
Back from a long trip I am still catching up with group's messages (great to see that it is alive and casting).
Regarding aerial mends I miss something that I haven't seen mentioned so far and that I always teach to my students.
Aerial mends only work while the loop is unrolling: when the line gets straight tension disappears and after that it isn't possible for any wave to travel along the fly line.
I normally demonstrate this by holding a length of line (say 15 m) between the student and me; then I send a wave along the line and ask the student to release the other end of the line before the wave reaches his hand. Thus he can see that mending in the air isn't about casting in an upwards trajectory to allow for more time before the line touches the water, but about controlling loop speed in order to have time enough to perform the intended motion before the loop gets straight.
Just in case it might be of interest here is a short piece I wrote about my approach to aerial mends:
My best,
Aitor Coteron
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Dead Drift Casts: An alternative approach.
from Aitor
The use of Dead Drift Casts (DDCs) pose fly fishers with some special difficulties in actual fishing situations; however, I think that some of those difficulties come, mainly, from a couple of factors that have nothing to do with the casting techniques themselves. The first of those factors is the huge confusion of names that these casts "enjoy": some of them are known by several different names and, to make things even worse, you can find the same name applied to very different casts. The second factor that poses an additional difficulty is the way in which these casts are taught.
The conventional interpretation makes of DDCs something rigid and without any apparent relation between each other. Problem is that such rigidity impairs the out of the box thinking needed to face the variety of situations we encounter on any fishing day. For instance, let's see the usual explanation of a Reach cast; it is something like this: "After making the stop on an overhead cast reach the rod to one side."
Let's imagine that I am on a river bank with some low branches overhead and I need to present the fly with a Reach cast to the right.
I will try to convey the idea with another example: I remember when 6 years ago I had my first experience of a fly casting certification test. They asked me to perform a Reach cast and I made one that suited the situation I have just mentioned: a backhand cast followed by a reach to the right. The immediate reaction on the part of the tester was that he wanted me to make an overhead cast and then reach the rod to the right. I wondered why that first cast didn't qualify as a valid Reach: it used the same technique and resulted in the same line layout on the water (and, besides, it was a little more difficult), but... it just wasn't the standard Reach cast.
In my opinion this rigid approach only results in a very limited ability of adaptation to the ever changing challenges of river fishing. In this regard I like Borger's way of looking at these techniques. It is a way that explains each cast by reducing to the essence the movements needed to perform it. It is an approach that leaves ample room for experimentation and that, above all, encourages improvisation on the water.
Almost all DDCs are based on what the rod does after the forward stop, that is, during what on an overhead cast would be the follow-through phase. This follow-through on a conventional cast is vertical to the water and accompanies the falling of the line. Well, the base of most of the DDC is a modification of this follow-through, be it in direction, in speed or both. There are four directions in which we can move the tip of the rod after the stop: up (and its equivalent rearward), down, left and right.
So I don't need an overhead cast to make a Reach to either side (as it's what happens after the stop what counts, the position from where the rod begins this movement is completely irrelevant): I only need to move the rod tip, while the loop is evolving, to one side or the other.
Each of these basic movements has a concrete effect on the layout of the line on the water. The important question here is that these aren't rigid and independent movements but they have the ability of being interconnected. Let's imagine the face of a clock in front of us, with the rod tip pointing to the centre of that face. Now let's take into account that an upwards movement of the rod tip doesn't have necessarily to be towards 12:00 (we have defined the movement as one with a vertical component, not strictly vertical). If, for instance, we move the rod tip from the center of the imaginary clock face to 2:00 this movement has two components: one vertical and one lateral. This motion will yield the combined results of a Parachute cast (vertical component) and a Reach cast (lateral component).
Knowing the effects of everyone of the basic motions (upwards or rearwards, downwards, left and right) we have the foundation for some personal experimentation, that is the key of everything. Mastering DDC asks for as much practice and effort as mastering distance casts, however I find them much more useful in everyday river fishing, so I don't really understand the low level of interest that they normally get from what Charles Ritz called "conscious casters".
Aitor
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[GH]
Aitor,
Well done !
Some comments:
Puddle cast = "dump cast" = Pile cast * ** *** *****
The FFF BOG CCI and MCI Testing Committees have taken the position that a MEND is repositioning the fly line after loop formation.
If we go by this description, then most "reach casts" are really reach mends. (I suppose we could get super technical and call them "reach cast-mends since a cast is made followed by a reach mend.)
Phil Gay and others have pointed out that as they use these maneuvers on a daily basis, they perform the cast and the side-reach prior to loop formation. It that event, according to the above definition, they are performing a true reach cast. For me, that one is not easy.
Jason Borger describes reach mends and reach casts as separate entities based on the definition of a mend as being performed after the cast. ****
Doug Swisher has been given credit for first describing the reach cast in print in the U.S.. As I read his description, I note that he described it with the side reach move performed prior to loop formation (Highlights are mine.):
"The Reach Cast: (1) throw a moderately powered backcast and come forward with a wide but firm loop; (2) sweep your hand across your body at a 45 degree angle; (3) at the conclusion of the cast you should be leaning as far as possible to the left with the rod tip almost touching the water." *****
Years ago, Doug was my examiner for the CCI exam. I performed a typical reach MEND. He passed it, but after the test took time to teach me the way he did it as a true reach CAST.
* PRESENTATION by Gary Borger, 1995, pp. 218-219.
** THE ESSENCE OF FLYCASTING , by Mel Krieger, 1987, p. 121.
*** In The RING of the RISE, By Vincent Marino, 1976, pp. 35-37.
**** Jason Borger's NATURE OF FLY CASTING, by Jason Borger, 2001, a Modular Approach, p. 259.
***** FLY FISHING STRATEGY by Doug Swisher & Carl Richards, 1975, p. 32.
Gordy
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