Silver:
I must have missed Steven’s point. I am still not certain what his point really is, even after reading it for the third time. At any rate, it certainly doesn’t address cleep’s original post.
Cheers,
aged sage
What Silver said about transitioning from spin fishing I’ve found to be dead on. Also, my students who play softball, baseball, or any other throwing activity where wrist movement is an issue, usually need some help breaking the muscle memory they’ve developed in those sports. The wrist lock helps a lot in those situations. Another tool I’ve used is a heavy rubber band. Because it flexes, it won’t stop the wrist from flopping, but it will tell you you’re doing it, thus reminding you to stop doing it and helping retrain the muscles involved instead of merely restricting them.
The rubber band is an excellent tip!
aged sage
Another way to teach the “micro wrist” is to buy a bag of marshmallows and to stick it onto a pencil tip. Kids love the exercies of flipping that marshmallow at the stop. Plus you can give them a marshmallow to eat if they do a good job.
I once sat amazed at the analogy Jerry McKinnis made on a show called the “Fishing Hole” describing the act of casting a rod. Very similar to the marshmallow flick. He said: " Get a stick and put a glob of mud on the end of it and flick the mud off the end of the stick". It is what it is isn’t it.
And if you really want to get the hang of it, flip the marshmallow or the mud ball at a target. You’ll get the idea real quick.
IMHO. You would do better with a drill like this rather than a Wrist-Lock or even professional instruction. Marshmallows and mud balls are cheap, at least the last time I checked. It is very uncomplicated instruction compared to some of the books I’ve read on fly casting and I know personally the idea really works well when starting out the beginner.
i can’t remember the name but i used a wrist lock because a stupid mistake at age 14 left me with 2 fingers and 1/2 of thumb on right hand with no appendage to grip the rod. so when i went to fish right handed i couldn’t hold the rod. the wrist lock provided the appendage and kept fish and back casts from pulling the rod from my hand. as muscles developed i left the wrist lock behind but if not for that small leather strap i’d probably not have continued and would have gone back to bait and hardware.
Micro whatever. At the end of the cast, when you are about to lay the fly line, leader, tippet fly on the water surface is the time to flick the wrist to give the extra boost to the cast to extend the cast, removing any slack line in the cast.
Paint Brush, Bowl of Water, Side of House or Shed. Do the casting motion with the wetted paint brush in your casting hand. As the fly rod is just about to become parrelle to the ground, flick the wrist so all the water on the brush, hit one spot on the wall, you do not want to see a long vertical wet strip sprayed down the wall.
I learned that trick from a FFF Instructor (no charge) at the Great Water Expo, when they were giving fly casting instructions…
Another FFF cast tip, that makes sense, is short casting stroke for short distance, longer casting strokes for longer distances.
Hairwing:
In the “boys will be boys” realm, as a boy on the farm, we would use the stalks of a common weed that grew to about six feet tall, and that was quite flexible, to ‘flick’ material from the pasture and around the barn at oneanother, and it wasn’t mud! It sure helped one develop their ‘avoidance’ reflexes; but have no Idea what it has done for my fly casting.
aged sage
I don’t know about your casting now, but I’d bet back in those days it stunk!
Good thing you didn’t roll that stuff into balls and use a pea shooter!
Kids these days miss some of the simple toys of years past because of law suits. Who would sell a pea shooter these days? We used to get old aluminum antennas and cut the ends off of the hollow aluminim tubes. Then we’d strip off the green choke cherry beriies and have a pea shooter fight. An afternoon of fun with a cardboard box for a fort, an old aluminum antenna part, and some green berries.
Now I use a $500.00 fly rod for enjoyment.
Definitely! We did not handle the raw materials. We became rather adept at identifying which would make a nice missile, and that could be ‘picked up’ using the tip end of our launchers.
We also used green china berries that were propelled from ‘African Missile Launchers’. We constructed the missile launcher stock from either a forked stick, or cut one out of the end of an apple box, and we left ‘standing orders’ with our friendly neighborhood service station owner for any old inner tubes that needed to be discarded, to be used as the catapault part of the contraption. The natural rubber inner tubes had a lot of stretch; resulting in quite a launch range. The tongue from an old pair of leather shoes served as the missile holder. And the china berries would leave quite a welt! I am convinced that my early experience at dodging the berries is what has enabled me to manage to do some really fancy foot work and not take a spill on more than one occasion while wading some of this countries slickest stream bottoms. (This is not to say that I haven’t taken a dunking or two; just that I have avoided many more than I have experienced.)
We lived near a viaduct, and during the simmers, we went sledding down the slope in cardboard boxes; just like sledding on snow!
One of our neighbors had a few chickens in a pen adjacent to the alley. It could be quite entertaining to take a pocket, or bib (if you wore overalls), full of pea gravel and go station yourself close to the pen. You would single out an old hen and pitch a piece of gravel at her until you hit her. When hit, you would set off the ‘pecking order’ chain reaction. The neighbor was none too enthusiastic about our periodic pastime!
Them were the good old days!!!
aged sage
As a kid 55 yers ago I purchased a cheap 6’ fiberglass rod with a line and aut0omatic reel. 7wt. No one around me fly fished. This is so far back they had not even invented spinning rods or spinning reels. $6.75. I saved up coke bottles and turned them in for 2 cents each till I got the money.
What I am getting at is this. It was the ONLY rod I had. I went to a lake where everyone went out in boats with casting rods and tackle boxes full of lures. Of course the typical Norman Rockwell kid with no shoes…or front teeth…could not afford that. So I went around the lake by myself. No one fished where I did because of the forested shoreliine…I think I went boldly where no man had gone before. And I am serious about this. I NEVER saw another person where I went…because the lake was more suitedf to boats. I found many coves that I think had never been fished. I am getting a tad off topic.
Point is I had no books or people to show me how to fly fish. I never ever heard about 10 o’clock 1 o’clock, stop the rod…etc…So I just learned by myself…by doing. I could land a fly on a specific rock and slowly drag it off into the water. I could bounce a fly off a log, or cast it over the log…pull it up and let it dangle tantalizingly just above the water…then flip it over into the water and after a pause strip to me.
Haven’t fly fished till the last 3-4 years and more reading about that than doing. But here is what I am getting at. I didn’t know all those casting aids, and techniques back then…I just learned how to manipulate my gear from experience. I could roll cast, cast under a willow tree…etc.
Not bragging here…just looks that way. My point is I learned all this stuff just by doing. But…now they have these new fangled things called graphite…and NINE feet long! I am indeed having trouble casting with them. Perhaps I need to try the suggestions. I don’t seem to understand…everything I KNOW anymnore.
I think my body remembers the little glass rod with the big 7wt line.
Anywhoooo…I think one can learn to get very good with any rod…if it is just the only rod they use. You will get so used to it it will be like a well worn baseball glove. All your casts will just come natural to you. You won’t even have to think about it.
Meanwhile for me…I gotta learn how to use 9’ graphite rods…
Dizzy Dean was a fellow native Mississippian from down around Wiggins. And Old Diz said “It ain’t bragging if you can do it.”
Gemrod—
You just told it like it use to be a long time ago. Brought back a lot of memories. I too had to work and pay for the equipment. Got 5 cents a day to help a guy down the street deliver newspapers.
The fellow in the hardware store that sold me my first fly rod back in 1950 did give me one piece of advice. He told me to learn to cast the fly line without using the rod to begin with. He told me that once I got 30 feet of line out in front of me and without hitting the ground behind me, then I could start using the rod. Worked wonders for me. No books, no lessons, no “casting aids”-- just a rod, a reel, and a line and a lot of trial and error. Many enjoyable hours spent on the water throughout the years and a lot of fish caught in the process.
George
Yes, old Fix And Repair Technician,
What a time period. I also bought mine at our small town hardward store. It was gathering dust in a corner because nobody wanted it. You got more advice than I did. Lucky you. My hardware store sold hardward and casting gear. He new absolutely nothing about fly fishing…and neither did I. I didn’t even know about leaders and tippets. So i tied on mono and went fishing. 1/2 a century ago. Yup…very very old memories…but I still remember them. I would have my mom take me to the lake and drop me off in the morning. And come back to get me at dark. And I spent all day alone in the woods. Sorry to ramble…really.
It’s just kind of neat to find a kindred spirit.
I have to wonder what gives Silver the right to publish information we FFF certified instructors worked so hard to have access to? I don’t see Silvers name (and I do know his real name) on the list of certified instructors on the FFF website.
Again… just wondering.
Huh?? I just went back on page 3 and read Silver’s post about the marshmellow thing. Jackster, are you saying that “hint” is on some hidden info board that only Certified instructors have access to and no one is allowed to give that info out? Or are you saying only certified instructors can give casting hints? If that is the case, I guess you will want me to delete my post?
George
I’m not saying that at all. The Loop I think is a publication CCI’s get as a teaching aid to further our education and to help us keep up to date and to aid in our ability to instruct better. I thought that publication was a perk for the effort and cost it takes to become a certified instructor. If I’m mistaken I whole-heartedly apologize.
Update: I just checked the FFF website and see I am indeed mistaken. Although the link states: "The Loop is the Federation of Fly Fishers Journal for FFF Certified Casting Instructors", it looks as though it is a wide open publication.
Also, the 3 point grip is described in a casting book I have that was published several decades ago. Maybe there really is ‘nothing new under the sun’.
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Jackster,
I am delighted to see you back posting and, hopefully, doing well.
I finally managed to take a decent brown up on the Au Sable at the MIFI 3 weeks ago. 
Hopefully you’ll be up to the TN FIn '10 (or '11).
Take care,
Ed
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