Tag Archives: Bernd Ziesche

Fly Casting: Hand-Casting and Loop Propagation

casting by Bernd Ziesche filmed by Aitor Coteron

a lot more than just a fun thing to do, what we’re mostly seeing here (and outside of some outstanding loops) is, although a fly rod makes fly casting and fishing easier, it’s not the rod that makes the cast.
take the caster out of the equation and nothing happens. we cast fly lines, not fly rods.
for sure, the ‘rod hand’ is flexing a bit but it’s nowhere comparable to the bend a rod experiences with the same cast. to understand concepts better sometimes its good to test extreme opposites and compare the results so, seeing that it is quite easy to get fantastic loop shapes with a broomstick (completely rigid lever) as well, it looks like we can remove the over-rated ‘rod load’ concept from the all-essential list of items that make a cast work or not. just as Bernd is doing here with his hand, it’s what (how) we do with the rod tip that makes the line do what we want it to do. it’s a lot more about how we move rather than what we use.

some food for thought…  enjoy !

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Fly Casting Styles

by Bernd Ziesche via today’s Sexyloops Front Page

some very wise words by one of the World’s top fly casting instructors/fishers.
they’re straight, simple, to the point and in a way, put an end to all these endless debates over which casting style is better, cooler, more efficient. regardless of one’s style, it’s the basic elements common to any fly cast and not ego, nationalistic pride or hero-worship that make it successful or not.

this is a real gem geared towards any fly fisher who wants to be a better fisher and not just instructors. hopefully it’ll open up a different mental approach, opening up a myriad of possibilities all leading to what i like to call: free casting or simply, having the essentials down so well, the required cast to fit the situation happens by itself . enjoy !
 
 
Right now you may want to ask: What is a FLY CASTING STYLE about?
That indeed is a question I’ve been asked very often. The reason for that question is based in many books, magazines, DVDs, websites, courses and demos each referring to different fly casting styles. This for example may be the TLT style by Roberto Pragliola (Italy), the Andersson style by Göran Andersson (Sweden), the Gebetsroither style by Hans Gebetsroither (Austria), the elbow on the shelf style by Lefty Kreh (USA), the 170 style by Rick Hartman (USA) or the Loch style (Great Britain) just to name a few.

I like to give a quick overview in my fly casting lessons about styles and why some of them have become so well known. At the end of that quick excursion I always point out the intersection of all styles: The 6 essentials I am going to teach during the lesson. If you like you may call them to be the substance of good fly casting:

1. proper line tension*

2. proper timing (waiting for the line to unroll)

3. proper acceleration to an abrupt stop

4. rotation at the right time

5. adjusting arc + stroke to a) line speed, b) trajectory and c) rod bend

6. keep the rod in plane during acceleration and deceleration

All of the above fly casting legends simply learned how to control these essentials in their (very characteristical) own style, their own way of casting. Peter Morse once told me: “Style is how your technique looks.” I like that short definition pretty well. The important word in it is “YOUR”!

In the end STYLE to me is the most over estimated word in fly casting. To me it’s the essentials which matter and then everyone has to find the best way for him/herself to control them and to fit them into many different situations.

Those who use all kind of styles and just choose the one that fits best to a given fishing situation are the true great casters to me!

I hope I could inspire you not to think too much of styles and instead stay open minded and find your own way to control the 6 essentials in order to shape your loops and match line speed + trajectory to present your fly to the fish.

And who knows you may even get a strike. I have done it myself a few times. Good luck!

All my best

Bernd

*Thanks Will Shaw ;)

and thanks Bernd ! :wink:

my grandma would sometimes say “Boy, you need to go out back and yell a bit till it goes away ! “

little did she know she would have made a great casting coach…

turn around !

“You can’t feel, hear, smell or taste the quality of your back cast but you can see what happens.”

today’s quote by Bernd Ziesche

an old saying in casting instruction is “The quality of the front cast is conditioned by the quality of the back cast”. the back cast is 50% of a full casting cycle which means it’s just as important as the front cast. the back cast is also something that as far as i can find out, and i’ve been searching for several years, is the only activity where we throw something behind us. our physiology and activities are based on what’s in front of us and we do that very well. however, since we’re not used to throwing behind, this is an area we want to work on using what we have. luckily, that what is probably our strongest sense, the sense we rely on the most, vision.
so, as Bernd so perfectly explains, if we want to improve our casting we need to know what’s going on behind us and the solution is as simple as learning to turn the head around to watch what’s going on but maybe more importantly, to confirm or not what we think is going on and thereon we can adjust what needs to be adjusted.

in case you’re thinking, “wait a minute, am I supposed to turn around all the time ? when i’m casting just a few meters ?” the answer is: obviously not.
just as when we start off fly casting and learn to do a straight line cast (and learn to no more do straight line casts just as soon as we learned how to do them !) this is a foundation exercise and these exercises are meant to build up our capabilities and senses and here’s the paradox: we want to develop the exact same senses Bernd said we couldn’t use !  this new learning and exercise needs a little time and regular practice. don’t practice it while fishing as it’s almost always counter-productive to practice and do the activity at the same time as we do neither well.

as for the pic, yup it’s me and yup it says FF&W, Jason Borger’s site Fish, Flies & Water but more on that later !

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