SLP of the Hand ?...Studying books....Lefty's teaching

 

Walter & Group:

 

 

From: G. Laurence Baggett [mailto:glbaggett@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, July 11, 2006 12:17 AM
To: Gordon Hill
Subject: RE: Bob Andreae on hand path

Gordy: I suppose this means that on a horizontal cast, the hand in not in a straight path in an attempt to keep the rod tip on such. I would presume the same is true for the vertical cast if identical force is used. Why does Lefty make such an effort at stressing you should attempt to keep the hand straight on a long cast, or does his method call for a different application?

On another subject- what have you gotten me into?? I received Borger’s book and have concluded it must have been written by a frustrated engineer!!!  I think I will buy an abacus or find some other method of trying to keep track of what he is saying.

Laurence

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Laurence....

 

On Jason's book:  As with Mac Brown's writings, I advise the reader to keep a little pad and pencil in an on-going glossary of his terms as you go.....some are different from those we are using every day.  Also, with Jason's book, I found reading it a lot less tedious when I ignored his diagraming of casting modules until I went back to read it a second time.  With Mac's, "CASTING ANGLES", I have suggested reading it in small doses at 5:00 am after two cups of coffee !

 

As with Ernie Schwiebert's, "tome"....TROUT, ( two volumes...1834 pages) I find that these books become a lot more valuable when used as reference material for a particular subject or cast that when read in entirety.

 

I have spoken many times with Lefty of some of his teachings which I have found to be not really scientific....but seem to work just fine.  The reason is that he comes up with plain talk stuff that gets easily into students' brains.

 

That straight line path of his hand on his inclined plane board works partly because no one can really keep the hand moving in that straight a path.....it's a generalization which leads the student to unconciously go from that initial attempt to semi-concious adjustments which help yield a fairly straight line path of the rod tip.

 

Kind of like teaching a flats fisherman to, "hit the permit in the head with the fly".  None of us can really do that and I think if we did no strike would result.  What we should really say, I guess, is:  "Place the fly exactly 6 3/4 " or 10 Cm. in front of his nose."

 

Many fly casting well known and Authored pundits have criticized Lefty for his statement:  "The distance that you speed up and stop determines the size of the loop".  They often pass it off by saying that he's just plain wrong.

 

I spent some time with Lefty on that one.  He told me that this concept gets into his students' heads quickly and gives results.  Technically, it's not completely correct, and Lefty is fully aware of this.  Gets close to the truth, however, when you consider that inasmuch as the caster usually drops the rod tip a bit as he, "speeds up to a stop", the longer he takes and the greater the distance the rod tip takes as that is happening, THE FARTHER THE ROD TIP DIPS BELOW THE ONCOMING LINE AND THE TIGHTER THE LOOP.

 

Another one of Lefty's teachings is to tell the early caster to, " Throw your cast directly at your rod tip".  His student will try to do that, and end up with a fairly good SLP of the rod tip with a bit of convexity at the end of the stroke to unload just below the rod tip.........ergo: a tight loop !!!!

 

He and I were doing a casting demo a few years back, and in front of the audience he told me to do exactly that.  I actually hit the rod tip and we all had a good laugh over it.  That gets into another one of Lefty's teaching attributes.... he ENTERTAINS as he teaches.  Every minute with him is just plain fun !  That element is so often left out of descriptions of, "what makes a good teacher".

 

His, "cure" for his student's tailing loop is often to say, " Make a longer stroke".  A, "bandaid-fix", to be sure....but it works.

 

Remember, that Lefty believes in easy simple language for his teaching that will get results rather than teaching by using physics and engineering language.  It's his teaching style.....you can see it as you spend time with him, or even by watching his videos.

 

Gordy