Jason Borger's "The Nature of Fly Casting". A review
I just received the book this weekend and I'm impressed. I've only read the first few chapters and my understanding of the mechanics of fly casting have already improved. I went out last night and had a good practice session using Jason's techniques and a BIG part of my tailing loop problem went away.
I found that my grip was close to his "3 point grip" already, but a minor change he suggested seemed to help a lot. Just by changing my grip slightly I fixed a problem of my rod tip going too far back on my back cast. This was just one of the "Aha!" moments I've had while reading the book. Another one was the understanding of WHY accelerating too fast will cause tailing loops by understanding HOW that acceleration effects the path of the rod tip.
My first impression of the book was "Wow!". It's very nicely bound in a horizontal format. It's probably about 8" high by about 11" wide. The book lays out nicely on a table and the overall feel is that this is a high quality square bound soft cover book. The quality of the binding and cover seem to hint at the quality of the information inside.
The premise of the book is that cast are made up of modules. The back cast is a module, the forward cast is a module. An in the air mend is a module. As you stack these modules up horizontally and vertically you can build any cast you need. But the important thing is to get good at each of the individual modules first. That sounds logical but how do you actually teach that? This book does a wonderful job of teaching, in print, something that you must learn through physical practice.
After teaching the basic cast Jason gets into in the air mending, on the water mending, picking the line up off of the water and more. He even touches on Spey casting and how we single handed fly casters can use some of the techniques of Spey casting to add casting modules to our toolbox. Then he adds in discussions of elliptical cast, curved cast and on and on and on into realms of casting that I didn't even know existed. I can easily spend a couple of years learning the basics of all these cast. But each module that you learn adds so much to your toolbox of techniques that I can see how every minute of practice will benefit your casting repertoire.
Among Jason's credits as a fly caster is the fact that he doubled for Brad Pitt in "A River Runs Through It" during the "Shadow Casting" segment. That was the scene where Brad was suppose to be so good at casting that he would float the fly above the water over a fish simply casting a series of shadows on the water enticing the fish to rise. Once that fish was drawn to the surface he'd land that fly perfectly and get a strike. That's the kind of thing that sounds great when you read it in a book, but could anyone actually cast like that for the movie? Is that cast even possible? Jason was brought in to figure out how to perform that cast. He did, and he was the one on film doing that amazing display of the art of casting.
You can buy the book directly from Jason at his website http://www.jasonborger.com/
I paid via PayPal and Jason was nice enough to inscribe the book with a personal comment addressed to me. That was another nice touch that I appreciated, but wasn't expecting.
If this review has spiked your interest then you may want to check out "Ask About Fly Fishing Internet Radio".
http://www.askaboutflyfishing.com/
Jason has been the sole guest for the full 90 minute show at least twice.
I should add that I'm in no way associated with Jason Borger or his teaching academy. I'm just a very happy customer.
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Originally Posted by DruLeeParsec
