Antietam Fly Anglers Casting Club featuring
FFF Certified Casting Instructor Robert Stouffer
August 2008 Calendar of Meetings and Events
Hagerstown Fairgrounds Park, Cannon Avenue Entrance, between Animal Barns and Grandstands. Standard 9 foot 5, 6 or 7 weight rod, 7 ½ foot leader with yarn fly. Bring your spey rod for a change of pace. Some Club members meet at the Hagerstown City Market located on Church Street (behind the Post Office on Franklin Street) at 7:45 (approx.) for breakfast prior to the meeting. Come and enjoy.
Saturday, 2 August - 9:00 AM.
20 min. Foundation Casting Stroke - 35 foot foundation casting stroke using three grips (key grip, semi-vee and vee grips).
40 min. Spey casting for one or two handed rods. The Dynamic Roll Cast technique(s)
30 min. Individual Problems
Saturday, 9 August - 9:00 AM at Hagerstown Fairgrounds Park
30 min. Foundation Casting Stroke - Line speed while maintaining your stroke.
30 min. Monkey See Monkey Do
30 min. Distance Casting (Bob Davis) - (continuation)
Saturday, 16 August - 9:00 AM at Hagerstown Fairgrounds Park
Casting Games - Come a little early and help to set-up. Bring a friend
Dry Fly Event
Wet Fly Event
100 Foot Cast to a Six Foot Ring
Under the Dock
Tight Loop
Ambidextrous
Wiggle Casts
Saturday 23 August and Saturday 30 August - No Practice - go fishing.
Bob Stouffer
Bob' June Training Tip
Practice Roll Casting on Grass
Yes, you can roll-cast on grass. First, cut the grass. If you do not have a great place to practice casting in you yard, cut the neighbor's grass. The planton seed stalks and dente de lion shoots are detrimental to practice because they grab your leader and line in a way to counter the smooth turn-over you are looking for. Secondly, remember that the roll-cast stroke is just the front half of an aerialized casting cycle. Thirdly, the anchor must be placed properly. You need some line in front of and just to the casting hand side of you. I check my anchor by reaching with my rod-tip to touch the yarn fly. If I have to stretch slightly to the front of and to the side (on my rod-hand side) it is a good "stick" or "anchor placement". Fourth, remember where your hand-arm-rod angle would be if you were at the pause after the back-cast. Start the cast by getting into that position or make it a longer stroke as if you had "drifted" to the rear. For really long roll casts, REALLY reach back. Fifth, remember to increase the Arc proportionally as the length of line outside of the rod tip increases. Lay the rod angle back farther for a long roll cast. Sixth and finally, the stroke (no, not the medical terminology) - the Casting Stroke; start slowly and accelerate on a STRAIGHT LINE HAND PATH (move your thumbnail in a straight line) - (here is the kicker) and delay the rotational acceleration (accelerating through the Arc) until very late in the cast. The acceleration, both translational and rotational, crest in the very last several inches of the stroke.
Here is another practice tip to remember about roll casting: during the stroke, move the rod tip so that it traces a line directly above the line layout (an extension of the 180 degree principal). If your anchor is in front and just slightly to the side, the cast should be made on a vertical plane. If the anchor and layout are farther off to the side, the cast should be made horizontally. Tilt your hand-arm to mirror the line layout. This tip will pay dividends unheard of in the financial sector.
The AFA Casting Club helps participants to improve their casting skills. It is an outdoor activity for practice, education and development. Currently, there is an FFF Certified Casting Instructor and other members who share the duties of presenting a skill and give encouragement and tips to the members. It is intended that the members who attend regularly will gain mastery of casting fundamentals and the ability to teach others.
Each session begins with some aspect of the Fundamental Casting Stroke. We then move to the skill for the day. The sessions usually last an hour and a half.
You will need a basic training rod, reel, floating line and 7 1/2 foot 2x leader. If you do not own fly casting equipment, email Bob Stouffer and he will scrounge one up to use on a temporary basis.
Bob's February Training Tip
Train on a regular basis with a moderately fast seven weight nine foot rod.
Although a seven weight is somewhat more than you may currently use for trout fishing,
it is good in wind, good for distance, good for trout, good for bass, good for stripers
and used to be considered as the basic rod for Western states because of its ability to chuck
wooly buggers, weighted stonefly nymphs and deer-hair sliders.
It helps you to tone your casting muscles.
Bob's March Training Tip
When practicing casting, wear a hat, wear sun-glasses or other eye protection.
Begin by stretching and making short casts. Practic for fifteen minutes per day and
concentrate on one skill at a time. Practice making 30 to 40 foot casts with a tight
loop that does not have the energy to straighten and does not reach the target. Use
a small ball of yarn (about the size of a dime or less) as a practice fly. Whatever the
skill that you are practicing, cast to a target. Evaluate each of your casts and
change your mechanics to produce a different result. Remember; one definition of
"insanity" is to repeat the same thing over and over and over again, expecting
a different result."
Bob's April Training Tip
I recently asked a very very good fly tyer how long it takes for a person
with no formal training to learn to tie a Catskill fly. He said that after
four hours of instruction, practicing a couple flies a day for a week and
then a full dozen flies in one sitting, a person should be able to tie a
fishable fly. It would take years of practice to be able to produce a
Catskill fly worthy to place on a fly plate.
Casting is not different than any other physical endeavor. It takes training for the motor skills to produce a good loop on command. It is not a skill that we are born with. Train prior to going fishing. Learn to load the rod by accelerating from zero miles per hour to 2 or 3 miles per hour and stop the rod cold at an attitude of approximately 90 degrees from your target in both the backcast and front-cast. Slow casting like this yields the most lasting results.
Now, back to the Catskill fly. There is a parallel. It takes four hours of instruction and practice to learn a skill (such as casting a 24 inch loop at 30 feet). If you wait a week without practice after the instruction, you will probably not be able to produce the success that you had in training. Fifteen or twenty minutes per day of casting practice, including evaluation of the cast, for thirty days will help you cement a movement that is repeatable. A good fly line used to last me three or four years. Now it is shot in six months without using it for fishing. This is your goal: render useless a great fly-tying vice through use and render useless a practice line in the next year.
Bob's May Training Tip
Next Casting and Practice TipThis is not about PERFECTION, but it is about IMPROVMENT. So some self evaluation. Rather than continuing to cast until the leader and line forms a basketball-sized tangle, stop and relax after each cast and look at the shape of the line on the ground. If it is a straight line pick-up and laydown cast, is the line straight? Did the leader straighten fully? Is your practice fly near your target? The six-step method of teaching is also the six-step method of self-evaluation (See Bruce Richard's Loop article, 1999).
Step 1 What did the Line do - Lets say that it made a very large loop.
Step 2 What did the Rod do - The rod tip traveled in a convex path.
Step 3 What did the Body do - Convex rod tip paths are created by the hand and arm traveling in a convex path.
Step 4 What should your Body do - To make a smaller, aerodynamic loop, the hand and arm must travel in a straight line path.
Step 5 What should your Rod do - If your rod is accelerated to a stop, the rod tip path will describe a straight line path as well.
Step 6 What will your Line do - A line propelled by the straight line path of the rod tip will form a smaller and more aerodynamic loop.
Use this method of self-evaluation to improve your casting.
Remember - if you throw a loop perfectly aligned on the eye-target line, you will not be able to see the shape of the loop. Practice casting off-plane (say a 45 degree horizontal plane) occasionally to see the loop. Use the buddy system or a cam-corder to evaluate vertical casting plane loops.
