Hey all,

well, as mentioned a few days ago, my wife and I put all our gear together the other day and this afternoon went out to practice casting in the garden for the first time.

We had a couple of hours casting lesson with an instructor back in November on holiday and our gear was a christmas present to each other, so it's been a while. I've been reading here and on sexy loops as well as the 'dummies guide to flyfishing.

Well, it took me about 5 minutes to turn the leader, tippet and yarn into one large knot that was in 4 pieces when I undid it all, leaving me with about the first 4 feet of leader remaining on the fly line.

Darn.

Well, it had been suggested that I could perhaps do with a shorter leader and there was my answer. So, back into casting.

First few goes and I was getting big, wide loops, which I knew wasn't quite right. So, with my wife reading instructions from the book, and watching the results, I started to work on keeping the rod going from too far on each flick of the wrist, and on making the flicks sharper.

Presto, reasonably small, neat loops. Hey, now we're getting somewhere. This isn't so hard after all.

Then I caught myself in the face with a back cast, and left an interesting welt up my cheek. Who knew that a little piece of nylon could sting like that. Hmmm. perhaps we need to treat this thing with a little more respect.

OK, so I carried on for another 15 minutes, occasionally getting some nice looking loops and not tangling myself up too much. Getting the rod pointing down to the ground gently at the end of a cast took a few goes, but eventually the line was laying down reasonably straight and in about the right direction. I had a small blister on the edge of my palm, and an aching wrist, so time to stop.

My wife spent 15 minutes working on her cast, and taking it in turns really works well for us. You can see the effects of different techniques and give the feedback you need to correct things, while seeing for yourself the mechanics you must be doing in your own cast that gives the effect you see on the line. Very interesting, and I think we'll continue practising together that way.

Grinning like a couple of 10 year olds, we packed everything away and decided to try and do this every couple of days, to work on getting it imprinted into the muscle memory. I'm sure there's going to be a few more posts over the coming weeks asking questions, but here's a couple for now:

Rather than trash another leader, what sort of weight and length of mono would be best to substitute? I have some 2,3,4, and 5x fluoro, but figured it might be better to just buy a cheap roll of mono instead.

With the line going straight back and forward, I found it was hitting the rod on a few back casts, what's the best way to avoid that.

Cheers,

Justin.