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Walter & Group...
[GH] From John Johnson. I placed my comments in his text in italics :
Hi Gordy,
I find this discussion very interesting.
You will remember Doug Swisher I am sure. He split the cast into pure horizontal pulling motion and then a loading or power stroke. We taught this in our TU schools starting in the late sixties. This is the way I taught until I started to use the casting analyzer to reduce my smoothness ratio. I found that whenever I would drag I would have a poor smoothness ratio. I could not avoid a slight rotation during the pulling motion. To avoid this creep problem I stopped doing it. Recently I have been working on reducing my loop size on my fifty foot + casts. I have found that if I drag and then delay the power stroke this gives me my best loops. I have watched several videos of distance casters and I am finding a few that use a long drag and then a very violent rotation at the end.
[GH] I've noted the same thing. Bruce Richards found (with the CA) that some expert casters can maintain a surprisingly smooth (almost constant) acceleration even when they use drag.
Years ago, I did some casting with Doug Swisher. He used the word, "pull" to describe what most of us now call DRAG. I have no idea who first used either term.
Our inability to settle on a definition for the casting stroke is causing great problems for me and I suspect it is a problem for others as well. I have spent hundreds of hours and years trying to sort this out and develop a solid concept that I can describe and defend. With my considerable experience taking the masters exam I can say that this is a major problem. The definition of a good instructor is one who is willing to accept different styles (casting theories). Is this also the mark of a good examiner?
[GH] A new Glossary (Definitions) committee will be formed by the CBOG. In the light of past experience, he work done by the Sexyloops group, and others as well as recent discussions, I'm confident that we will eventually have an FFF sanctioned set of definitions.
Yes. A good instructor accepts different styles and studies differing theories.
With my background in engineering and science I tend to think in terms of black and white. I try to identify variables that clearly define a certain outcome. The idea of degrees of freedom that makes it possible to define certain outcomes is important I think. If someone asked me to make a thirty foot minimum energy cast with a stiff nine foot rod I would say that you would need to use a 60 degree arc(from 11:00 to 1:00 on the clock face). This is the result of the extensive casting analyzer studies. If you described it to an examiner this way they would likely fail you. The idea of specific angles and clock face descriptions is frowned on by most examiners. When I read Lefty Kreh’s articles about long slow strokes and casting arcs for even short casts I am very puzzled. When I read about Joan Wulff’s slow loading moves I am also very puzzled. Bruce’s comments about long slow strokes being necessary good smoothness ratios also puzzles me. I at last might have figured this out. I may be missing an important variable. That variable is vertical motion. Some casters recommend leaving the hand in one plane (Lefties on the shelf) most others recommend dropping the hand on the cast. I spent some time trying to make some scale drawings of the casting stroke using a flexible curve. I found that it was nearly impossible to show a straight line rod tip path unless I dropped the hand during the cast. I showed Bruce this drawing and he pointed out that the drop was not realistic. I reviewed some measurement of Bruce’s forty foot casting strokes with him . It showed a drop of nearly a foot. He didn’t think this was correct either. If you were asked to make a straight line rod tip cast with a rod that had zero flex it would be possible to do it with the appropriate arc and vertical movements. The only thing that you would give away would be the ~20% spring effect when compared with a flexible rod.
[GH] Not easy to reduce all this to a common denominator. Here is a brief try:
For an efficient straight line cast with a small loop, there must be an (almost) straight line path of the rod tip in all planes. This can be accomplished with rod bend (load) proportional to the amount of line carried and the dimension of the casting arc.
As the result of casting style, these factors can be different for different casts and different casters as long as they are PROPORTIONAL.
The idea of creep being always a fault is worth looking at. If the major problem with beginning casters is casting with arcs that are too large what would be wrong with creeping a little and reducing the arc?
[GH] Some casters do just that. Paul Arden has pointed out that when this occurs, the movement is intentional and therefore not CREEP by one definition which says that if it is done intentionally, it isn't CREEP.
When teaching, I would not want to have my students use CREEP (or forward drift) to compensate for the use of too great a casting arc. For early students, I like to stick with one proper arc for a single length of line carried. Once achieved, then teach the use of arcs to match the different lines carried and matched rod bend.
Can I offer one more question about drift?
Lefty Kreh points out in his books that drift needs to be delayed to avoid opening the loop. Bruce Richards tells me this is not the case. What about pushing the rod up to close the loop? How does this fit in?
[GH] I've observed, rarely, casters who aggressively start a backward "drift" when they begin to learn it. As they do this, they sometimes dip the rod tip back and DOWN. Since this is a powered move, one can take issue with it being included as part of the drift. This can pull open an otherwise well formed loop. Lefty has pointed out that the back cast should finish in a backward and somewhat upward direction. The stop sequence being made with a back and down direction of the rod tip is more likely to cause this problem than the drift move. itself.
Lefty wrote: " Drifting with a rod is when you continue to move the rod tip after the stop, either by bringing it farther back (for the vertical cast) or extending your arm even farther behind you on a sidearm cast. If you are going to drift the rod, you have to perfect your stop. When you stop a rod, the bottom o the loop is at the tip of the rod. If you stop the rod and immediately begin to lower the rod behind or in front of you, you tear open the loop and divert energy from the cast. To drift properly, you have to learn to wait long enough to allow the loop to
escape the tip so that you don't pull it down, which takes a lot of practice. Once the loop gets 10 feet or so behind the rod, you can drift back and not affect the direction of the cast or the size of the loop." **
John
** CASTING with LEFTY KREH, by Lefty Kreh, 2008, p.53.
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