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    • FW: Re: What do you feel or sense at the end of the casting stroke?

    Group....

    Good teaching material.....and food for thought about casting.

    I appreciate Jeff and Server sharing these thoughts.  Read the string of messages preceeding this one.

    Steve Rajeff and I had a talk about this at breakfast, this morning. (He'd caught a big tarpon yesterday on a 7 wt. outfit...so was on a high ).  Steve feels that he needs more of a rapid deceleration to an almost stop on his false casts.....but not so much on his delivery stroke, where bending the rod is more important to him...followed by the rapid deceleration immediately after which he uses an upward and outward thrust part of the effect of which is not only an effective, "launch" but a sharpening of the loop.

     

                                                                             Gordy

                                                                     




     

    From: Jeff Wagner <jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    To: Ssadik1@xxxxxxx
    CC: hillshead@xxxxxxx
    Subject: Re: What do you feel or sense at the end of the casting stroke?
    Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 11:17:57 -0600
    Server,

In the videos you were looking at a "stop" is absolutely part of my
casting. Now understand that I dont physically have the strength to
stop the rod in a
very short period of time.  I DO rapidly decelerate the rod.  If you
look at my
rotation and the speed of rotation the length of strength.  It takes me
about 6
total feet of stroke length to achieve the speed I have, plus about 150
degrees
of overall rotation with the max rotation coming in the last 12 inches
of stroke
and being about 80 degrees of final rotation.  My rapid decerlation is
performed
in about 6-12 inches.  At this point the deceleration of my casting is
as great
    if not greater than the acceleration. I think that is greatly apparent in the 
    video.   I have the casts diagramed also to show this.  Does the hand stop
instantly no.  Do I think about doing this, no.  I have done it so many
times I
    dont think about much of anything anymore. But the but of the rod does rapid decelerate. In your message I replied to first you mentioned the the stopping of the rod, but in this last message you mentioned the tip. Of course the tip 
    does not stop when the tip does.  The tip does rapid decelerate as much as
possible given the decerlation of the butt of the rod and the flex of
the rod. In my casting specifically I do rapid decelerate the butt of
the rod, and this
allows the tip to go to RSP and then counterlfex.
    You mentioned dropping the rod. You ahve to decelerate the rod before you can drop it. Dropping it shows there is no more forward momentum. That means the acceleration had to be stopped in the direction of the cast before the rod was 
    dropped.  We could throw the rod and just let go as the rod is at max
acceleration.  I have tried this some degree and can say that the loop
does not
unroll in the same fashion and does not have the same energy.

You asked about lifting the rod to decrease the loop size after the
stop. Absolutely this works, no question.  It would be akin to an
aerial mend where
    we reposition the line as it is unrolling. That is a separate principle from the loop shape caused by rod tip deflection, it would not be necessary if the 
    tip of the rod was moved in a more efficeint straight line path.
    Also, about students casting errors caused from not stopping the rod. I think every beginner class has this. If the student wrist casts (or with the whole 
    arm) and moves the rod in an arcing motion with no defined
deceleration.  I can
    then use the term stop to help the student understand that by stopping the rod 
    in a certain position it will direct the fly line a certain direction and
transfer the energy from the rod into the line.

--
Jeff Wagner

Master Certified Fly Casting Instructor, Federation of Fly Fishers
Fly Fishing Buyer, Jax Outdoor Gear
Fly Fishing Guide, Jax Outdoor Gear
Redington Pro Staff
970-481-5887
jeff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
www.dhflyfishing.com


Quoting Ssadik1@xxxxxxx:


    Jeff,

 I wish I had more time - I would have written back to you earlier.  I
    looked at your videos -- maximum distance casts -- and I got the impression but didn't put in the follow-up time to either confirm or dispel it, that you weren't 
    making any type of a purposeful stop at the end of those casts.    I can, I
    believe, fairly accurately portray on those casts when the fly line will be in 
    free flight -- on your cast it will be where the rod tip is 2-3 feet before
RSP then after passing RSP your tip moves maybe another three feet during
    counterflex and a final rod position only a few degrees above horizontal. All the motion after the cast is actually formed probably doesn't impact it very much 
    if you were using backing like you described to me previously.  So what I'm
    saying is the manner in which stopping occurred wasn't real important to your 
    results.

  I haven't personally seen a casting fault where a student makes a
    meaningful cast then continues to drag the rod around after the cast is completed. 
    There are just too many problems associated with this doing this for normal
    physiology -- again this is predicated on actually having taught the student what a cast is and how to do it in a fundamentally correct manner. The way that I 
    present things is to explain that the cast occurs with the firm rotation of
    the wrist over an angle that has conciously/subconciosly chosen. The firm wrist rotation is//must be accompanied by contraction of both the bicep and tricep 
    muscles to brace the wrist -- particularly for someone below the advanced
    level its almost impossible to perform a concentrated wrist rotation without using these muscles in that fashion. The muscle contractions can occur before the 
    start of wrist rotation but not later than the start of wrist rotation. For
    students who don't do this instinctively, this is the major lesson for them to learn. One of the things I do is to have them watch by muscles contract at the 
    cast location and I have them grasp my upper arm and feel the contractions,
    explaining that this is what I want them to try. This co-contraction actually 
    stops the forearm and upper arm from rotating significantly further and the
sensation of something akin to a hard stop can I admit be confused with the
    actions required to firmly rotate the wrist. (You may not recognize it -- but a firm wrist rotation without freezing your arm parts is a tricky maneuver that 
    takes more athletic ability and strength -- guys like you have refined that
    skill to a great degree.) The wrist having gone through its preplanned range shouldn't or won't be physically capable of going further and stopping the arm parts happens more or less automatically. If the student is getting the right picture the muscle contractions do it automatically. The main thing the student 
    needs to learn is how to use the wrist -- i.e., with the larger arm muscles
    contracted. If the student has trouble with this then instructing him to stop 
    hard can facilitate the muscle contractions but if he has already used up
    some/most of the wrist rotation it will be a limited improvement. If he doesn't do this (a casting fault) then he is "waving the rod" and I have people from the audience demonstrate waving and then have them, usually with some assistance, 
    demonstrate a real "cast". I prefer to request that they perform and
    understand what is effective -- an effective wrist rotation facilitated by proper support from the large arm muscles. I think the concept isn't hard to learn or 
    demonstrate to the student and better than having them try to learn it by
    accident by contracting the muscles at the end of the cast to stop the rod. Hence I 
    refer to any stopping that occurs as an artifact -- largely a totally
    involuntary event to a beginning to intermediate caster. The stop itself has no 
    effect on the energetics of the line since it is in free flight already.
    As far as opening the loop we should be looking at the question of caster 
    initiated activities that can cause a smaller loop.  We had one other good
record in the data we've taken (to bad we don't have more data coming) of
    another caster I'm sure you know performing a baseline cast (but with high line speed, I think) and even in that example there was, I would estimate, four feet of loop opening tip motion. I'm positive that as the cast extended forward the 
    loop did not maintain that size. That record started later and went through
    the end of the cast and you could emphatically see what I have been expecting -- free flight significantly before RSP, line directed toward the ground (say a 45 degree angle), and the subsequent counterflex, adding up to several (3-4) 
    feet of tip motion perpendicular to the direction of line motion.  You can
    imagine that with a maximum distance cast that the loop opening motion is greater. 
    I can't get into it in detail but the casts you perform for long distance
    incorporate what I refer as base motion effects. When these types of casts are 
    performed the best energetic are achieved when the augmenting base motions
    maintain large speeds right through to the time free flight starts (this is the 
    instant when the top leg of the loop is established) and you may want to
    release the line about then. Whether you continue to move your rod hand forward doesn't effect the line, you have no additional wrist rotation available, and unless you purposely try to drag the line down anything you do will have little 
    effect on the moving line.  Even if you dropped the rod to the ground it
    wouldn't have a significant effect if the running line is thin and the flying fly line will tend to stabilize the moving loop at some size. So anything done in 
    the spirit of stopping on this kind of cast is irrelevant.  However, I do
    wonder if anything can be done intentionally by the caster to reduce the loop dimension. I think it was Paul Arden that I posed this question to and I'll pose it to you now. To me it appears that if the rod hand could be lifted upward before and just after RSP then the lowest point on the bottom leg of the forming 
    loop can be raised, rotational drift during counterflex and rebound which
    places the tip at a final lower position could be counteracted and the rod tip position could be placed closer to the flight line of the line. Have you tried 
    this?  If not, would you and let me know if its physically possible to
    achieve. I tried it for a few minutes but so far I'm moving too late and too slow, but for the later part of the line extension the loop seems to be tighter with 
    a more pronounced sag closer to the rod tip because of having moved the rod
    upward. If the rod could be raised when only a very short bottom leg had formed 
    it should be a prettier picture.

As a final remark for this evening -- try this.  For the type of cast you
    perform to demonstrate loop control and integrity (line pinched to rod), grasp your arm and experiment with different muscle contractions -- your normal cast where your muscles contract simultaneously with wrist rotation, intentionally contract a little before wrist rotation, and (this could take some effort) wave 
    the rod so that you produce no//little contractions.

Nice hearing from you again and hope that you are coming to Bozeman this
summer.

Talk to you again soon - Server