With Hywel Morgan coming up for Angling Active’s open day here in Stirling this weekend, I asked him if he would do me a couple of hours casting lesson today, before his two days of demo’s.
I have tons of space for casting practice in the playing fields across the road so it made sense to do it there, and Hywel came up last night and stopped over so we could get a start fairly sharp this morning. In the event it was looking a bit touch and go with the weather, as the sky was jet black looking out at the surrounding area from the village, but where I am, while there was a nasty blustery wind, it managed to stay dry.
Hywel Morgan Cast Master
This is the first full on casting lesson I have ever had and it was a revelation. I feel in many ways my casting has improved over the last year or so, certainly I get a bit more distance and a lot less problems with tailing loops and the problems such faults can bring like so called wind knots. However the areas I that thought were my problems turned out to be less than I imagined, and the true problems with my cast were something else entirely! Only an experienced eye like Hywel’s can pick out these problems, observing your cast from different angles and aiming to correct you.
The areas that needed attention were
- my false casting being a wee bit too fast; so slowing this down,
- my tracking ;trying to keep the rod in a steady line not rotating it through the cast, and finally
- the final delivery being a bit too low
In some casts where I thought the final result was not bad, it was pointed out to me that the way the line was landing- slightly snaked up was indicative that energy was being disipated across the ground where the line would have travelled further had I released the line slightly higher. It took me a lot of concentration to really improve this but I felt towards the end that I fianlly started to get the release that wee bit higher and the line was travelling out with a lot less effort than I would have imagined. On the few occasions when I properly relaxed I did some casts I was well proud of!
I did find concentrating on the three main faults was quite hard when putting it all together. I think I got my false casting down quite well, and was consistently getting this right ( Its something I have been focussing on recently anyway- but it now appears putting in a bit too much power and effort though my timing wasn’t bad), but my final delivery tended to let me down, as I was thinking so much about keeping my arm a bit closer to my body, and release the line at the right time and timing my double haul.
As ever with casting, its not fishing and a two hour casting session involves a lot more throwing the line about than a two hour fishing session where you probably cast only a quarter as many times, as you fish the line back. I definitely fisnished the session feeling much better about my technique, I would not say there washuge leap forwards in my ability ( thats going to be down to me now and practice) but I now know much better what I need to focus on in my practicing, and I think I am definitely throwing a lot less physical effort into the cast to get better results, and over a day thats got to make fishing easier.
When you see a master of fly casting like Hywel do it though it’s amazing! There is a tendency to blame your rod, or line or conditions, when you cast poorly, and indeed today certainly I had the latter as an excuse on some occasions, I think even Hywel would agree, but the tools could never be a problem as Hywel was putting out easily 10 yards more line arrow straight with no false casting at all using my gear! It puts it all in perspective how good he is at this!… and it looks sooooo easy.
Big thanks to Hywel for his patience, time and advice. Same time next year maybe?
