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Walter & Group...
[GH] From Don Pendleton I have highlighted his question:
Gordy,
Many of the earlier suggestions I have applied and they have greatly helped. White yarn helped. Finding the distance in the horizontal casting plane is certainly the quickest and easiest. I'm quite confident it will also be the simplest way to teach the distance approximation to a CI exam bound student. But I have also found that the most accurate line to target assessment is gained in the slightly off vertical casting plane. Great mental picture of sighting the center of the loop and making the two legs go through a funnel.
I have struggled quite a bit in the past with the accuracy skills and now I'm feeling much better at getting dead on with the first or second cast. Cross body still needs a lot of practice, especially the long target.
Several continue to mention the "hover". No one has explained it clearly. A slightly checked mend in a vertical plane?
Great section!
Thanks,
Don Pendleton
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[GH] Don,
OK... let's devote this one to hover techniques .
I was amazed last year when I stopped by Jim Valle's "Casting Rendezvous" one afternoon at the Conclave at West Yellowstone. There were 4 CCI's among the participants trying to learn hovering. Not one of them even came close until they were taught. One of them didn't even know what the term meant. i watched while each of them developed the ability to hover after only a few minutes of instruction by Jim and the Masters working with him.
The caster can simply "check" the flight of loop as the leader unfurls. Can be done with slight back movement of the rod or a "Check Haul" performed just as the leader completes it's straightening. A much more accurate Hover method is described below :
The best description I've seen in the fly casting literature is by Joan Wulff who wrote in her fly casting accuracy book :
" False Casting to Hover the Fly
When precision is all important - when you're dropping a dry fly into the feeding lane of a rising trout, for instance, or peppering the nose of a reluctant Atlantic salmon - hovering a fly will let you judge exactly where it will touch on the water. Here, you increase your line speed, through a very well defined power snap, so that the energy passes through the fly with enough speed to hold it in the air for a second.
During that second you can see exactly where the fly is relative to the target inch. If it looks right, just lower the rod or repeat the cast exactly, and drop the fly on the next one. " *
When teaching this to students, Joan makes it a point to note that the trajectory should be calculated to aim the cast at an imaginary point several inches above the actual target. She's well known for then saying, "If you like it, drop it."
The reason for the higher line speed (greater application of power) is so that when the loop unfurls as the fly approaches this position above the target, all energy has not yet dissipated, so the system has some momentum resulting in slight tension between the fly/leader and the rod tip. This is key to this method of effective hovering.
Joan adds another tip in her book, Fly Casting Techniques. Here she writes, "Do not followthrough until after the fly has hesitated in the air, leader fully extended, and you make the decision to drop it." **
The reason for not following through is clear. By avoiding that step, the caster maintains that tension which is critical to maintaining the hover.
If you wish to make a dramatic hover as you teach this technique, you do what Joan taught us in her School for Instructors years ago:
1. Use more line speed.
2. Aim higher over the target (say about 3 feet up). and a little beyond it.
3. As you "squeeze to a stop", slowly torque your rod handle back a bit. (Don't jerk it back or the whole thing will fall in a heap of slack !)
4. Hover as long as you can as you maintain gentle tension....
5. Then let it drop to the target as you release tension.
Caveats :
a. Doesn't work in even moderate winds. (Except for wind from straight behind.)
b. The timing and minimal use of reverse torque for #3. is critical.
c. No matter how much I practice this, I'll never be able to do that as perfectly as Joan does it !
Back in 1976, Vincent Marinaro wrote about hovering a fly using an entirely different technique. In an attempt to have the fly hesitate in the air and then fall with the leader in a series of slack waves for a natural drift, he used a slack line cast (puddle cast .. sometimes also called the Pile cast). This method differed from Joan Wulff's description fundamentally in that the energy of the cast was well dissipated by the time the fly was suspended above the "target". I quote him:
" The puddle cast is a soft cast very much like a false cast. The punch shot is eliminated. Furthermore, the final false cast is delivered much higher than horizontal, perhaps 20 or 30 degrees higher. The leader should never straighten out. The fly should not travel any further than the end of the line. At the end of the pitch the heavier line begins to fall first while the fly hangs suspended momentarily in the air. When the line is approximately halfway down to the water the entire leader looks like it is suspended in midair, perpendicular to the water. Then the entire leader collapses softly into a compact cluster of loose coils. It look terrible but it really works." ***
The English translation of Charles Ritz' A FLY FISHER'S LIFE describes a variation of the "puddle cast" which he called the "Parachute Cast". While used mainly for a slack line presentation, it also held the advantages of a fly stopped high above the water afterward dropping slowly to the presentation point. ****
Doug Swisher once taught me to make what he called, "a vertical reach". The fly is cast beyond the target and then the rod is pulled back and up until the fly is above the target. You then stop and let the fly drop. I was never able to be as accurate as he was in doing that.
None of these techniques remotely resemble the one I briefly described in our recent messages as one I love for a weighted bonefish fly or permit fly. The closest i could get to a description in the literature was by Ed Jaworowski who gives Lefty Kreh the credit for it. He called it the "Up-Hook Cast". Ed's photos are the only ones I've seen of this one. *****
I do it with an off-horizontal highly energized - high line speed upward vertical curve cast with the rod tip low so the fish don't see it so easily. As I finish my stroke, I make a brief upward sweep with my rod tip. (Joan Wulff's, "upward curving power snap").( Ed Jaworowski says to "stop by sharply turning the hand up and immediately lowering the tip back down to a level position" ).Counterflex brings the rod leg back down a bit anyway. The loop is on its way by the time rebound occurs. The loop travels out, then curves up as it unfurls. If done correctly, even a weighted fly will rise, hesitate for a fraction of a second, then drop a short distance straight down to the water and immediately sink to the bottom of the shallow flat. This works for me for several reasons. First, the bonefish or permit don't see my rod as easily. (They tend to spook if you raise your rod up for a vertical plane cast before you can even get the cast off... especially on a bright windless day). Second, it plops the wighted fly gently into the water. Third, that fly is coming straight down ... not down at an angle; so it sinks quickly. That works because bonefish look down to feed on critters on the bottom.
One more technique described by Jason Borger: The "Fly First Cast" is nothing more than a Tuck Cast made with a dry fly and a long leader.****** With a weighted fly such as a weighted nymph, the Tuck cast is used to quickly drop the fly down into pocket water. With the dry fly, the higher you make the "tuck", the longer it takes for the fly to land. This is really a downward vertical curve cast. You must follow through to make this one work. It is not really good hover technique at all. Also, except in expert hands, it isn't very accurate. NOT one to consider for Task 11.
* Joan Wulff's FLY-CASTING ACCURACY, by Joan Wulff, 1997, pp.47-48.
** Joan Wulff's FLY CASTING TECHNIQUES, by Joan Wulff, 1987, pp. 75-77.
*** In The RING of the RISE, by Vincent C. Marinaro, 1976, p. 37.
**** A Fly Fisher's Life, by Charles Ritz, English Translation, 1959, pp. 27-29.
***** The Cast, by Ed Jaworowski, 1992, pp. 138-140
****** Jason Borger's NATURE OF FLY CASTING a modular approach, by Jason Borger, 2001, pp. 188-190.
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