My wife and I are trying to decide which is the better way to teach our 13 year old to cast. I am self taught with a little help from one of Lefty’s books, but I tend to fish with a stiff wrist, My wife learned from her father to cast moving only at the wrist. Whats the best way to get the boy casting with the least frustration?
Hey Merak,
Welcome to FAOL. One way that may be of help is to have your son wear a long sleeve shirt and place the butt end of the rod under the sleeve while he learns to cast. That will help to keep his wrist straight until he gets comfortable with the proper form.
Jerry
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I will take that as a stiff wrist vote. I have been a fly fisherman since I was about 12 or 13 and I’m 43 now. Mostly warm water, grew up in Lansing MI. Brings back a lot of memories reading the Great Rivers section. Fished the Grand at Moores Dam for carp and catfish as a boy. This is a great website.
Anybody else? The wife will be upset if no one supports her side!
My vote is a combination of the two. And the book I’m reading would support this. 
—David
(formerly known as “clueless”, and only the name has changed)
I’d suggest a combination of both wrist and arm as the wrist “snapping” correctly gets the line moving that much faster, more speed in the air, more distance, more control etc
I suppose its also dependant on the rod as I do tend towards stiffer rods that need loading with a bit of grunt
Tough question. I’ll vote for the combination.
Just to give you another option to ponder. First, I’d like to recommend you read either Fly-Fishing with Children: A guide for Parents by Phil Brunquell MD or First Cast: Teaching Kids to Fly-Fish by Phil Genova. I’ve read both books before I started my three daughters out and it helped me navigate through the pitfalls of teaching my children to fly fish. Good-luck!
I’ll vote for the combination, sort of.
I think you should start him out with the stiff wrist approach, and then let him ease into applying some more power with the wrist. This will both be easier on a young wrist and will reduce the likelihood that he’ll be prone to dropping the rod to horizontal on the backcast.
As an alternative to the shirt sleeve approach, you can use a bandana to tie the rod butt to his wrist (with some slack) to limit the range of motion.
Merak
Welcome to FAOL. While I’m not in favor of allot of wrist when casting, I won’t try and tell you which is right or wrong. I will say that in my experience too much wrist causes me not to throw a nice tight loop.
What I will suggest is that you get a copy of Joan Wulff’s Dynamics of Fly Casting. Either the dvd or video. Another suggestion would be to look at Fly Fish TV on OLN. Bruce Richard’s from Scientific Anglers did a series of casting instruction. He is one of the best casters/instructors IMHO. His series may also be in dvd, but I don’t know for sure.
Last but certainly not least, check out Fly Fishing Basics here on FAOl.
Good Luck!
I wish there wasn’t such a varied way of teaching fly casting. It seems even the experts advocate different styles of casting. This leads to confusion, and mis-information.
While there are certainly great casters who use a wrist action, or “power snap” to achieve more line speed, or throw a different sized loop, most of the time, using your wrist will leave you with a poorly formed loop and less line speed. This seems like a controversial opinion, but I always tell my clients this, " Just think about how many muscles, and how big those muscles are in your forearm, bicep, tricep, and shoulder compared to the small muscles that move your wrist." It’s much more efficient to utilize those bigger muscles.
Another reason to SEVERLY limit the movement of your wrist while casting is to prevent wide open loops by breaking your wrist too much during the back or forward cast. If you are casting correctly with little wrist movement and using mostly your elbow joint as a pivot point, it’s hard to make the mistake of opening your casting stroke too far, and drop your rod tip on the back cast. Your forearm will come in contact with your bicep muscle, and it will stop your cast at 1:00. If you’re using your wrist however, you can and probably will break it too much and create a wide open loop that is not efficient.
The best caster I’ve ever seen is Joan Wulff. She casts the most beautiful loops with pinpoint accuracy, and she uses almost no wrist. Try it the next time you’re out, and at the very least, you won’t be as tired after casting all day.
Jude
Small flies work best. Elephants eat peanuts.
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You all have been most helpful. Thank you!
Try this one:
It has helped me all the way. I am self taught with only teachers being experience, with a rather “scientific” aproach listing everything, what works and what doesn’t, and reading. Best of all books read:
Fly Fishing Strategy by Doug Swisher, Carl Richards with illustrations by Dave Whitlock.
Great book hope it helps
Dave
The book I learned the most from was “Master the Cast”. It really made a lot of sense to me and I highly recommend it.
Migs
YOu should not be using your wrist. Watch Mel Kreiger’s The Essence of Fly Casting. It is one of the best videos for teaching someone to cast, and I would reccomend that anyone who is going to teach someone to cast also watch it.
Using your wrist creates a whole bunch of problems, while wrist casting may work if your fishing small streams, it WILL NOT WORK whn you must cast LONG or big rods. Your wrist has virtually no strength compared to your entire arm.
Also by casting with your wrist, you tend to open up your loops more. Line speed is dictated by the hurry up and stop at the end of the stroke, when you break your wrist, this stop happens more gradually. This means that you transfer less energy to the line, and you cast with a more open loop.
Again, watch the video, he clearly explains and demonstrates the correct motion.
Josh White [url=http://www.rogueflyshop.com:ea8c4]http://www.rogueflyshop.com[/url:ea8c4]
If you cast with a stiff wrist, the “Pivot Point” or “Fulcrum”, is located at your elbow.
If you cast only using wrist action, the “Pivot Point” or “Fulcrum” is somewhere up the rod from the “Handle Grips”.
Let the rod be the lever, that multiplies your casting speed to the line in the air, and the rods bending action, will cause the rod to load some of the energy, and transfer the energy back into the line, during the forward cast.
Try casting both ways, with the same rod speed, and see which gives you more distance, and better line control!
I have Severe Tendonitis in my casting arm (finger tips up to my shoulder socket), which is a permanent condition. So I do not have great arm strength, for casting. If I did not use the fly rod, as a lever,keeping the reel seat tight against my wrist, I would not be able to cast 50 to 70 feet.
You can flip the wrist at the end of the cast, as if it was a paint brush, and you were flicking paint onto a canvas. This helps the tapered leader shoot out from the fly line. But the flip is done at the end of the forward cast.
Another thing to remember, shorter casting motion for shorter distances, longer casting motion for longer distances.
~Parnelli
[This message has been edited by Steven H. McGarthwaite (edited 19 May 2005).]
While I was flailing away into a healthy wind in the Bahamas I was told to put a hankerchief under my armpit and utilize a sawing motion with the wrist uncocking as the line extends past you. This helped me.
The double haul is next.
I appreciate the above tips from our members
thanks.
Philip
I had him out in the yard tonight and keeping his wrist straight, did much better.
I cant even get my students to walk in lock step, let alone relize that there is only one way to operate a fly rod. Its thoes darn rascals at the rod and line companies that keep manufacturing different rod tappers and line shapes. Oh and fly tyers, well dont even get me started with them. If we could just get mother nature to desighn the perfect fly fishermen, then of course only one opinion would fit and work perfectly for all. Perhaps I should invest in some of that cloneing stock. Things are certinely going to get a lot esier in the future.
Captn. Paul Darby