A first step

I’m in London. Today, I’m taking a first lesson with a couple of great great guys from the Sexyloop wild bunch. We’re there thank to Mark Surtees, who organized this meeting to raise some funds for Knut Syrstad. The preliminary rounds of beer went reasonably well, Mark, Steve, Mike and Vince being all jolly good fellows indeed. One hour from now I’m hitting the lawn, and for the first time in my fly casting life, someone will really know what he’s doing.

Actually, I will quite possibly be the only one not knowing what he’s doing. I expect to learn a lot, although no one seems to know what. After the fourth round I’ve been assured that most of my casting faults were to be solved in 5 mins top.

Now that would be grand. I’m more excited than Blair Waldorf on Cotillion’s day.

Flesh of my flesh

This is Noam, my elder.

I told him: focus on your stop, and let the loop happen. Then I returned to the big boys’ business (there was a shootout going on). Happily, someone with her priorities better sorted than mine took a couple of pictures (let Isabelle be wholeheartedly thanked here).

He was doing really good on his own, boy I’m so proud.

I’m building a sweet 6’6 3wt that will be a better match to his arm.

News from the bench

A sneak peek from my next build: a sweet sweet 9′/4wt, on a MHX blank. Her big sister, the 9′/6wt is my favorite toy on the lawn, and quite the fishing tool also, but in most situations I find myself involved in, a 4wt would be better suited.

I’m prepared to fall in love with this joy stick. Here’s a sneak peek of the build in progress

the babe

Unrelatedly, I’ve been training on the lawn this week. Three 2h sessions. My leader was none too happy about it.

Am I trying too hard?

Actually, I think I invented a new kind of wind knot. It’s cute in a way.

About yarn

The stuff has some cool and hardly foreseeable uses. 1: the infamous fly casting practice fly. 2: the line on an indoors fly casting practice rig.

The following is Tim Rajeff trying hard to make you want one. The bastard got me. I’m not buying one, but I’m sure as hell will build one. Except mine will be cooler, with a cork grip.

Since we’re talking casting…

I’m back on the lawn, harder than ever. It’s great, except my casting sucks as usual. I’m currently incredibly regular at producing tailing loops that fuck up my forward cast at around 19-20m. Backcast looks much better usually, no idea why.

It didn’t prevent me to win my club’s casting event last sunday. I wouldn’t have boasted much, but since Julien already spilled the beans in the coms… It was a little weird: you could use whatever you wanted (nobody uses a double handed anyway), but you just had 3 casts. I was using my usual 6 wt (F906-MHX) rigged with the excellent Barrio GT140. Long story short, I won with a whooping 26.5m cast.

I guess it says more about the lack of real competition than my virtues as a caster, but I won’t deny it was flattering.

Also, it was good to demonstrate to a bunch of friends waving 10′ 8wt cannons that really, really, it’s the arm that does the job. The lawn session this morning tells me I would have ranked 2nd with a Mallard 4wt, a truly marvelous finesse line I will review here as soon as I’ve caught a couple of fish on it.

So really, it’s the arm. See you on the lawn.

Dirt cheap

that’s what you’ll pay for absolutely first class casting tuition if you go shopping for that in Sexyloop’s Auctions. It’s for a cause and here’s what you can do to help. Helping is good for your karma, and my honey bunny — who holds a doctorate in Indian Studies — assures me that karma enhancement translates immediately in tighter loops. A known fact at least since the ninth century. 

Casting gods. You want to be like them.

The best guys in the world commit to works their ass off in order to tidy up a little our crappy casting. It’s too good to be true, and it’s happening there, there, there, there, there, and there. That’s right, no less than six different opportunities to take the next step on the soteriological stair that leads to the casting gods.

Ascending

I’m in for the first course in fly casting of my life. It comes from Sexyloops, and as anything that comes that way, it’s experimental. First I should say it’s for a cause and here’s what you can do to help.

Mark, who’s the prof, treats panic fits with Ralph Vaughan Williams. Sure sign there’s a mind operating in there. I’ll probably need to load my phone with the Sea Symphony for when he’ll turn to me and say

The program was “An afternoon in the park with me and Snake using readily available foodstuffs and parts of a well worn drum kit to help improve your casting.” Let’s proceed. I need you to grab that aubergine and come here.

Meanwhile, if you suddenly cannot stand your life anymore because you just realized you’ll not make it for Baguettes and Drumsticks, let me pass on the panacea:

Up and coming: a summary of my life with the MHX F906-4, my sweet 6wt, her little sister the F904 I’m currently building, and a special project, the rehab of a 3wt that’s full of promises. Stay tuned.

What happens

when you rig a 6wt with a WF4? I’m not sure, but I’ll check out today. Last time I tried Julien’s Barrio Mallard wf5 on the 6, and it was brilliant. Actually, it’s more or less the way you get a TCR: take a (good) fast 6wt (edit: 7wt), label it 5, et voilà.

Now, google images is a funny toy. I was looking for an illustration for “underlining” and somehow found that Marc is not the only good thing in Sweden. There’s also Camilla Sparv.

It’s not only the name.

Same Camilla that apparently is another piece of decoration in her own house, at least the way this Lasse guy shot her.

Check the tarpon. Do you think she caught it on a underlined 9wt?

Friction

A very interesting discussion is going on here, it’s about friction and rod design.

Friction (good kind)

Aitor Coteron (übercaster from the sunny side of the Pyrénées) shot an amazing slow motion of what really happens when the line shoots through the guides. He was kind enough to point me to it. The video, I gather, was meant as a tool for rodbuilding decisions. It’s called Guide size effect on line shooting, and I can’t embed it here, so go see it, but remember to come back for discussion!

What I take from the vid is that bigger strippers will give you more weight,  and nothing more. Line slap may be worse with smaller guides, but even then I doubt it would slow the line much.

Clearly, if distance is to be gained by fiddling with the tackle, what has to be bettered is what happens at the stripper. I think that shooting with a rod at an angle like 45, and not horizontal, should help a lot. Then, if I were a distance caster in tournament, I think I would experiment and try to find a way to coil the line properly in order to reduce random waves and collision with the stripper. Perhaps if the line was on the ground behind the caster, in line with the tunnel of guides, it would help.

 Casting porn, featuring Alex Titov

I wasn’t aware of such aspects of the casting sport, but once again Marc is there when I lack of knowledge. He says:

soft and short grass doesn’t seem to make a big difference but tarps, blankets and such are obviously better. some comps allow them, some don’t. some comps have a mandatory stripping basket which imo is always better because it’s higher and closer to the stripping guide: less distance to travel and if worn on the front, is less at an angle (more in line with the rods than a pile on the ground).
i almost always use one to fish far and it makes for easier (less effort) casting.

[...]

coils: some do and some don’t. Rajeff is pretty picky how his line is placed.

i make two piles, one in front with the line to be shot and one to my side with the carried line. nothing’s really ideal but this works for me.

Marc seems to suggest that friction is useful for line control.

 lets keep in mind that a little, or better yet, controlled friction can give better results in line control and loop formation. as a somewhat extreme example of this let’s look at the benefits of the triple haul or line check.

That’s a fascinating thought, at least because 1. I have no idea what a triple haul would be, 2. I can’t see the causal connection between friction and control, 3. hence there’s probably a new world of ideas opening before me.

And now I need a stripping basket.

The wall

My tracking sucks. That’s no news but now I think it’s the next big problem to solve on the road to progress. I cast farther and farther, I’m a couple of feet short of shooting a whole Barrio Mallard 5wt, but my loops are ugly and plagued with tails.

I tried to cast along a wall this afternoon. If your tracking is bad, you know it because you hit the wall, so it helps keeping everything in plane. It may work, but after some contacts with said wall, I began to fear for my rod’s tip so I went back to my usual routine. But I think I’ll have to do that wall thing again. A lot.

My mug from now on

Actually, the farther I cast, the more I think my casting as a whole is shit, and that the more I work on it, the more my bad habits entrench. I’ll need a clinic soon, before it’s too late to correct them.

Things in urgent need of attention:

1. tracking
2. wrist (am I using it correctly?)
3. casting plane (tilted 45 deg, can’t make it vertical)
4. sharp stop
5. power application

and probably tons of other stuff like grip, stance, casting arc and whatnot.

Does anyone know a good casting instructor within a 2 hrs drive from Lille?

Lesson (never) learned

yeah. still struggling.