Hi Ernie, As far as learning to cast, the absolutly best thing is to find someone who is a good caster and get some hands on help. Trying to learn from a book or dvd is tough. Why? Because unless someone is observing , you will not know what you are doing wrong. You may think that you are doing exactly what the book says or the dvd shows but probably not. Unless you have someone observe what you are doing you can develop bad habits which must be unlearned to succeed. Casting is not hard to learn but getting off on the right foot will make it easy.This is coming from some one who has been there.