Interesting title…we’ll get back to it.

A couple years ago I wrote a narrative essay entitled “Roots in Sand.” I wrote it during a time in my life that a few things had happened: I had just moved to Cape Cod, I had broken my body (See “Last Traction Hero”), and the faults in my marriage had shifted in such a way as to cause a major tsunami. I typed the essay with two fingers of my left hand while walking on a treadmill. One of the things you learn about a broken back is that walking is one of the few things that feels good, of course I also had a busted ankle. I’ll reprint it here because I now wish to add something of an addendum.

Roots in Sand

I’m not what you would call old, but sometimes I feel it.

Today is one of those days, when memories come readily to the mind’s surface as the cold, rainy wind blows, tracing the outlines of broken bones each one a memory. Some carry funny stories; some, not so much. I feel them all as I walk along a new beach doing what I do every winter; look for new places to fish.

This will be my second summer living on Cape Cod, which makes it the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my adult life. I take note of darker water and current seams – the interesting places – a fisherman’s eye instinctively seeks out features like these and focuses on them. I could walk for ten miles and find only a handful of these areas, so each one is precious – far too precious to miss. I don’t bother taking pictures or even committing them to memory; this is the ocean and before the end of a single tide the sands could shift themselves into an entirely different pattern.

Not like granite, not like home.

I catch myself mid-thought. For whatever reason, I have always considered New Hampshire’s White Mountains to be my home. I didn’t really grow up there or live there for very long. In fact, I’m not entirely sure how much time I spent on my grandmother’s farm as a kid. I do not call it home because of Sunday meals or warming pies – there were neither – more, because of secret fishing spots and brook trout; because it was where I learned a natural world is one I fit best into; because when I returned to my parent’s house in the city, I felt very out of place in my own room.

A small thing really, but a small thing that changes means far more than a large thing that stays the same – a stone on a sandy flat, far too precious to miss. It is just a thought, though, and not truly an honest one. The White Mountains are not my home, no more than Boston, Presque Isle, Rome Maine, or several other addresses to which I’ve had mail sent. The truth is I’m not really from anywhere, and there is nowhere to return to.

For years it has been an empty goal of mine to return home. Something I always told myself without really listening. I miss mountains and rivers. The truly majestic power of a maple in its autumn raiment is not easily replaced by scrub pine, a feeble-looking tree with its roots in sand, cowering by the sea. The sea is very beautiful, but not welcoming. Like true art, it seems more a reflection of the world than a part, a chaotic swirling of thought and dream; one can look upon it for a long while without noticing time, but this is winter. Soon the beach will be full of people, and the energy of the sea will be muffled by battery-powered radios and the rattling bass of blown out speakers. I will not come here then, for it will no longer be a wild place, the kind I understand.

These thoughts are a bit much for me, so I concentrate again on fishing. White foam surges through a funnel in a sandbar, spilling into a dark trough. I imagine a deceiver dancing through that cut in the sand, to the stripers, which surely must lie in wait. I smile. Finding spots such as this is the biggest challenge for a fisherman with no “home water” – I’ve gotten rather good at it, though not good enough. I think of other spots I’ve found over the years, most of which I will never return to. I wonder if there is something wrong with moving from place to place and having no bigger regret than having lost a fishing spot. I do not miss the people I’ve worked with or communities I’ve been a member of, only the current seams and hidden eddies I’ve uncovered, the insects and crustaceans I’ve learned to masquerade hooks as. Changeable as the natural world can be, it is constant in its principles. It may be the only thing.

I look at the scrub pine again. The sickly vision, its twisted trunk and oddly angled branches filled with random clumps of needle-like leaves, seems awfully beautiful to me now. It grows; it lives. These roots do not find the promise of rich soil shored up by thick blocks of granite; rather, it finds purchase in a dune of sand clinging to life by sheer force of will, each day boldly facing the changing sea. I wonder if it is not the sight of the maple that I miss, but the scrub’s roots that I lack.

Through all my address changes I have had just one companion, fishing. No matter where I find myself I can always find fish and comfort, and be happy. Is it a hobby? Perhaps. Is it a colossal waste of time, to catch a fish and then turn it loose? Maybe. Yet, for good or ill, it has become the largest share of what I am. When I day-dream it is about fishing, when I exercise my broken elbow it is so I can cast again, and when I take a stroll along the beach, invariably I am looking for a place stripers can trap bait. All of these things are a part of what fishing means to me, yet more so; it is the sense that when I am on a stream, lake, pond or the ocean I am where I am supposed to be. I feel no desire to be anywhere else, no need to do anything except that which I am doing, to be nothing more than that which I am.

It feels like home.

Italics do make things look more important.

Kind of a maudlin tale, certainly not my best work, but lately I’ve been thinking about it in another light.

I’m a New Englander.  That’s something to be proud of.

Now I’m sure the other regions of America are nice, and it is possible – although highly unlikely – that places outside of America are alright to not incredibly sucky.  But better than New England? Hell no.

In case you are some intellectual feeb from a square state or stupid enough to think that brown corn syrup is a suitable replacement for the greatest substance on Earth – more on that later – New England is a collection of six states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut.  The capital of New England is Boston, each state has its own capital but no one cares.  Politically the people of New England are diverse. Vermont is populated by Communists.   New Hampshire by Libertarians. Rhode Island is run by the Mafia – not the good Mafia these would be like the third cousins of “The Family.”  Maine is the home of people who though they may be aware that things happen outside of Maine they don’t much care.  Connecticut is where New Yorkers park their cars – Connecticut would have been kicked out of New England if not for the fact that Vince McMahon lives there.

New Englanders are always cranky.  This is not to be confused with the anger or general mal-temper of a New Yorker.  The crankiness is actually a test, to see how you respond.  Surprise or fear indicates that you are from the South or Swedish.  No reaction means you are from the Midwest, where a stupid grin is a clear indication of California.  The reason New Englanders do this is to help them spot New Yorkers…New Yorkers are the lowest form of life and like most parasites they often try to pass themselves off as something else.  New York sucks…that’s why so many of their people flee to New England.  Some will even halfheartedly mumble “Yankees suck” in Boston bars. New Yorkers are the reason New Englanders are always cranky.

Quick think of the funniest person you know…odds are either A. He is a New Englander (I didn’t put She because women have no sense of humor every joke told by a woman is about a man…men are therefore the source of all humor in the universe.)  B.  The Funniest person you know is not funny (you are probably from the South where quick-witted just doesn’t happen.)  Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien are New Englanders – Dave Letterman couldn’t get a 4th grade class to laugh at a fart joke.  Seth MacFarlane and the majority of the writers for the Simpsons…New Englanders.  This is carved in stone.

What about Larry the Cable Guy?  Developed the character and his comedic talent in New Hampshire.  The humor rule is absolute.  Non-New Englanders simply aren’t funny.  Larry the Cable Guy is mildly amusing…but I know my audience and I’m sure you think he’s a riot.

New England has beautiful beaches, complex forests, mountains (well really big hills at least,)  and an array of freshwater lakes, ponds, rivers, and streams….you can see all of these features driving less than 3 hours.  We also boast the worst weather in the world at the top of Mount Washington our highest peak.  I once hiked to the top of Mt. Washington – there was a parking lot and a train station – the summit was a pile of rocks I didn’t bother waiting in line to climb.

New England has maple syrup…the true nectar of the gods.  I can not write words of love in prose.  As a nod – and just a nod – to America’s little sister to the North, I will use the Ode form popularized by Pierre de Ronsard.  Ronsard took the classic Pindaric story structure and then added a closing couplet to each quatrain to form sestet stanzas with ababcc rhyme schemes.  That’s right ladies I am the perfect man.

Ode to Maple Syrup

Maid of Vermont thou art a bitch,

Peddling brown corn syrup as -

Maple’s kiss.  I’d toss you in a ditch,

Or lock you up in Alcatraz.

Fake Maple Syrup I hate thee,

I would much rather ingest pee.

Beauteous Amber sweet and light,

Playing on my lips Maple Syrup

You are the maiden, I your knight.

Words my steed, meter my stirrup.

Love stronger than Ernie and Bert,

You, my water in the desert.

When my eyes dim, my hearing fades,

How precious your kiss to me then,

As Grim Jim deals me the Ace-of-Spades.

You my escape, my opium den.

My ghost leaves with one last task, Syrup calls “DO IT”!!!

Whisper “Nice Boobs” to Jennifer Love Hewitt.

That’s right – not only did I rhyme “syrup” I included a Garbage Pail Kids reference…ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED!!!!

The other New England staple is Cranberry Juice.  I use cranberry juice as an alarm clock.  Say you absolutely need to wake up in four hours to catch a tide…alarm clocks have snooze buttons.  If you drink a pint of cranberry juice, your ass will be up in four hours, and you will learn exactly how full a bladder can be.  Word to the wise if you start to have dreams about: urinals, swimming in your boss’s pool, German porn – wake yourself up immediately.  Cranberry Juice is tart, unwelcoming, and great with Vodka – New England in a nutshell.

Cranberry juice is also wicked good for you.  People from the Boston area say “wicked” a lot.  That’s because they are wicked awesome, kid!!!  People from Medford – a town outside Boston with the highest number of mentally unstable people per square inch – have a unique way of expressing disdain.  They simply take the keyword of the last sentence their victim uttered and add  – THIS to it with a dramatic down thrusting gesture towards their nether region.

For example:

Teacher:

Sean, you would have performed better had you studied for the test.

Student:

Study-THIS!!!!

Judge:

I am going to sentence you to 45 days.

Defendant:

Sentence-THIS!!!!!

Judge:

Ok, 90 days.

I hope this will serve you well if you ever decide to visit New England…granted I hope even more that you’ll stay in whatever hell-hole spawned you and leave us alone.

Yankees Suck.

]]> http://hatchesmagazine.com/blogs/Flyosophy/2010/03/15/bleeds-cranberry-juice-and-maple-syrup/feed/ 0 http://hatchesmagazine.com/blogs/Flyosophy/2010/02/24/putting-it-all-together/ http://hatchesmagazine.com/blogs/Flyosophy/2010/02/24/putting-it-all-together/#comments Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:31:23 +0000 Sean Juan http://hatchesmagazine.com/blogs/Flyosophy/?p=382

Well here we are at the finally essay on casting.  Hopefully you noticed a subtle secret.  Casting extreme distances is no different than a basic four part cast.

There is no added strength.  Drifting is probably the only real change in technique.  All we really learned is how to be more efficient.  That’s enough.  Distance is just one instance in which having an efficient cast is desirable.  Blind fishing, working against a wind, using heavier gear, and well I really can’t think of an example of when being efficient is a negative.

I believe that this teaching method was developed in New England, specifically for guys who were transitioning from very small streams to fishing the open ocean.  Using heavy gear in the wind to cast distance can be very tiring, especially if your cast is inefficient.  I could be wrong about the history but I doubt it.  This method teaches you, by breaking bad habits, and drilling…Puritanical New England if you ask me, which you didn’t.

I bleed Cranberry juice and Maple Syrup.

Also I hope you noticed one other theme…

I am under no delusion that what I wrote alone will add one inch to your cast.  Everything depends on practice, especially with this methodology.  Some of you will take this to heart, most of you wont, that’s just human nature.  I didn’t post these articles to make anyone feel bad or to express that what you have been doing is wrong.  I just wanted to detail the process by which I learned to cast, and how I still continue to practice.  Also, I wanted to show that it can be done, and it’s not all that hard to learn, but it does take time.  Again as I have said before, I don’t believe in talent, but hard work and dedication.  If you want to be able to do this you can, but you have to put in the work.  15 minutes a day doesn’t sound like much, but it requires drive when you have to string a 9’ rod and then find an ample casting place.

I still practice nearly every day…because it’s like Ernie said:

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

Ernest Hemingway

Granted he was speaking of writing.

This brings me to another point…

I am going to continue to update Flyosophy with articles but perhaps at a slightly slower pace.  After a lot of soul searching and heel dragging I have decided to make an attempt at my boyhood dream of being a writer.  I used to write all the time as a kid…mostly Lord of the Rings type stuff.  I wrote through college but then stopped.  It wasn’t until I had my accident and Will Mullis recruited me for Hatches that I started writing again.  I really can’t thank him enough.  So anyhow I have written an outline for a fiction book that I will be working on, hopefully you’ll enjoy it someday, and if things don’t pan out hopefully I’ll learn enough from this attempt to make a more successful second one in the future.  The book is not directly related to fly fishing – its actually going to be a fairly dark comedy – but I also am planning to write a few more narrative essay style articles for Flyosophy…well just wanted to keep you guys appraised of what I’m doing so you don’t think I died or something.

By the way, I have it written in my will to have no memorial service when some jealous twit finally manages to take me out.  I don’t want anyone faking they cared and getting time off work…that’s how bitter and hate-filled I am…inspiring!!!

Back to work…

So let’s recap what we have learned so far.

The back cast is incredibly important to not screw up.

A casting stroke is a smooth acceleration of the rod, it is more important that each moment of the cast be FASTER, than the actual speed of the cast.

A positive stop is necessary to release the energy of the cast into the line.  The more abrupt this stop the tighter the loop and the more efficient the cast.

A drift can be used on both the back cast and the forward cast to increase the casting arc.  The Positive stop should still be aimed high, the rod drifted back AFTER the positive stop.

The ideal timing for the start of a forward cast is immediately after the back cast has straightened out.

Hauls can and should be used to increase the load on the rod.

During the final back cast line can be shot into the back cast, not only to increase the mass used for the final forward cast, but also so that when the angler pinches down on the shooting line he can instantly pre-load the rod at the start of his forward cast.

In my opinion, casting a fly rod should be one of the biggest joys in fly fishing, not something to struggle against.

The final drill is to simply cast.  Cast as often and in as many ways as possible.  I believe that if you repeat the same cast over and over the amount your will learn is minimal.  Practicing a cast is different that drilling.  The back cast drill for instance is designed to teach muscle memory and develop feel.  When you have these you can cast in any plane at any angle.  Try making a cast from your belly.  Always cast at a target.  Practice on windy days.  You get the idea.  Imagine the rod stopper, or take the time to tie the rod to your wrist again for a few casts.  It is these subtle tweaks that will transform you from someone who can cast into a true Master.

Did I miss anything…oh yeah, practice is everything.

Sorry Ladies…no cheesy pics of singers or actresses – the object of my desire is a platter of meatballs.  Make no mistake I would kill all of you for a decent meatball.  God I’m so hungry, today I ate a bag of frozen corn…times are tough.  And if you aren’t supposed to put metal in a microwave why is the rack in there metal?  Stupid soup cans…

Enough for the introduction…

Of all the stuff that has been written about fly casting, I feel the lion’s share of it has fallen to the double haul. A lot of this material contradicts itself…or at least seems to. In all honesty, I personally believe that the majority of what has been written about the double haul was written by people who have no idea how or why it works.

In this regard, my article will be no different.

Seriously, I have no idea why pulling against a force with a force in the opposite direction increases that force. I even asked my physics professor, but he started with some crap about torque and yo-yo’s and all sort of brainiac BS, I was sorry I asked

So if you need an explanation for why this works you won’t find it here. However, I have a better than fair understanding of the “what” of it, and with practice I have no doubt anyone can learn how to perform this technique.

Now there has been a good deal of debate over how and when in a caster’s education to introduce the double haul. I feel that the single biggest impediment to learning to haul has to do with your rod hand. I’ve taught enough people to see that the reason many find the double haul to be so hard to learn – is that they often “forget” how to cast with the rod.  For example you see a beginner who finally learned the positive stop (hardest part) and is producing beautiful loops.  Rather than spending the time to commit this to muscle memory, the student attempts to add a haul and the whole cast falls apart.

Naturally the student and often the teacher assume it’s something they are doing wrong with their line hand, and focus on the technique for the haul. Their hauls are perfectly timed and executed, but still the cast either falls apart or is not significantly longer or more powerful then they were without hauling.  So what went wrong?

Most often the problem is that they simply stopped making crisp positive stops with the rod hand. Hopefully you will spend the required time to develop the muscle memory of the positive stop – but odds are you wont, look its just human nature. Standing in a field doing the back cast drill with a nice positive stop is boring and makes you look like an idiot. I once got the phone number of a dental nurse after having my wisdom teeth yanked and being half in la-la land with blood pouring down my drool soaked chin….but in 20 years of practicing at well traveled parks and office developments – never, not once, not even close.  However, by concentrating on the haul, the rod hand becomes a secondary concern, with muscle memory your positive stop and casting stroke is on auto-pilot, without it the cast falls apart.

Your choice.

A perfect haul with a poor rod cast give you much worse results than a poor haul with a perfect rod cast.

The real key to learning to haul is to make sure that the rest of your casting components stay consistent. I find the best way to do this is you keep an eye on it. The “look over your shoulder” method is ok, but I don’t recommend it simply because it takes you out of the cast by changing your body position. Honestly, if you are a good enough caster to reposition yourself during the cast without screwing it up, odds are perfect good you don’t need to look at it, or need to read this article for that matter.

A better method is to simply move the whole cast into a horizontal plane in front of you. Square your shoulders (for a righty) your left shoulder with direct your “forward” cast and your right shoulder will direct your “back” cast. Now find a football field and stand 6′ from the end zone (a similar effect can be created by laying a rope along the ground if you MUST your could even use the baseline from a baseball field, Heaven Forefend!) With your rod by your side and its tip straight out and parallel to the ground, roughly three feet of the rod should be in the endzone. You are going to make casts on this horizontal plane, aiming the casting along the line of the endzone – the rod tip must NEVER leave the endzone (none of this break the plane crap.) This will keep your loops tight and powerful.

Now with the MARK in your line hand, start making some false casts. Concentrate on making good positive stops as the tip arcs towards the border of the endzone. If you have a fast rod and feel that you can make this cast with less of a casting arc, step back a foot. Keep doing this until you are comfortable – then continue until you are bored. By using your eyes and the positive stop you should be making very consistent casts in terms of distance and accuracy. You may also want to note that (unless you are HUGE) the rod tip is less than four feet from the surface of the Earth, yet you should easily be able to keep the line from hitting the ground while false casting – something to think about the next time you are fishing from a belly boat. You should never slap water with your cast…unless you want to when using a big hair fly for largemouth bass.

Now continue to do exactly what you were doing but add a haul. Now you may have read that you only need a tiny tug during the positive stop, or you may have seen some guys making dramatic cross-body hauls. Since I’m not really sure how it works I can only say what I have found best.

I find it easiest if both my rod and line hands are moving in synch or if they are doing exactly the opposite. I like this because it avoids the “Pat your head, Rub your Belly” theme of some other hauling techniques. So essentially I am hauling for the entire casting stroke…and like the casting stroke it starts slow and accelerates to a quick but short tug of the line during the positive stop.

One other point…I find the haul is always useful, but to make a major difference in the force of the cast, it only helps if you allow some line to slip through your fingers. If you are holding the MARK, the only time you want to add more line to the cast is on the final back cast before you make your delivery on the next forward cast. This is ESPECIALLY true if you are using a shooting head or a line that mimics one with a very thin running line. Controlling a cast with the running line is a bad idea.

Now stop…

If you already know the answer to this conundrum then I give you, by the power vested in me by the Esteemed Lords of Fly Fishing – the right to have a Cadbury Cream Egg (they are only around till Easter) I don’t care if you gave them up for Lent, New Years Resolution, or even if you are a bitter old bastard.  Cream Eggs are good and you deserve one, Kudos to you.

Now the rest of you morons, drop and give me 20 Hindu Push ups!!!! Fie for shame!!! Standing like an idiot making false cast after false cast is needless…with good technique – which you have, a crisp positive stop, tight loops, and a now a double haul you should never need to false cast unless for some reason you want to, and then the energy requirement is so minimal you don’t need to worry about adding more force to the cast.

Now back to practice…

Don’t try to kill it, just give it a nice haul – when properly performed the difference in power is substantial. When you feel you have it down, try making a few casts from the standard vertical plane (when I am fishing in a boat with another person I make many of my casts from the horizontal plane to avoid accidents – and on windy days I find these casts easier to make and quicker, a benefit when fishing for a speedy fish like a false albacore.) If the casts start to break down (they usually will) return to the horizontal and get that feeling back again. I actually find that it will help to close your eyes and haul away after a while – once this sight-based exercise becomes feel-based it’s pretty much learned (if you have the muscle memory for the positive stop you may be surprised at just how quickly.). You will want to experiment with quicker longer hauls and see what works best for you. I honestly can only say what I’ve found…you may prefer another way never hurts to try.

Next up we put it all together with one last drill…

I know I may sound strange talking about the muscle memory, but it does pay to practice, even if it’s just to pantomime the cast. When you bring your arm through the cast you want that smooth acceleration to a sudden positive stop…when you can do that literally in your sleep – come on I’m not the only sleep caster – everything else becomes easier.

“I’m hosting a quiz show, but I never considered myself a game show host.”

Maury Povich

If Maury Povich has taught us nothing, it is that timing is everything.  This is as true for matters of paternity as it is for fly casting.  He also taught us that a man with one testicle can father 17 children, being with a Transvestite is an honest mistake that could happen to anyone, and beauty is just a make-over and generous camera angles away.   I’m personally just waiting for the Maury Christmas special where Maury rides a camel with Jack Hannah to visit an obese baby and tell Joseph that, “You are NOT the father.”  Instant Classic!

Efficient fly casting has physical components: good positive stop, slack management, smooth acceleration, keeping the rod in a level plane.  Some of these we have covered already.  Today I want to talk about two tactical considerations: timing and drifting.

Quick question:  You make a back cast and the line is traveling backwards in a nice tight loop.  When is the MOST efficient time to start the forward cast?

1. After you feel a tug from the back cast
2. Before the back cast is fully straightened out – in a Candy Cane shape
3. The Exact Instant the back cast straightens out
4. I can express myself however I want

If you answered 4 congratulations you are moron…probably a public school teacher.

1. Is wrong because by the time you feel this tug much of the energy is already lost.  See most of us think that what we are pulling against is the mass of the line.  This is only partially true.  When we initially load the rod for the forward cast after the back cast we are pulling against the force of the back cast.  Isaac Newton – smartest guy ever – said that this force is equal to the mass multiplied by the acceleration.
2. Is incorrect for exactly the opposite reason 1 is…if the line hasn’t fully straightened then the curved length’s mass is not something we can pull against.  Furthermore that Candy Cane is slack…slack has NO place in your cast.  Just think if that section is two feet – then the first two feet of your forward cast does nothing more than remove that slack from your cast (Keep this in mind when we get to drift.)  Now I will say one thing to your benefit (see I can be nice)…you are obviously well-read, since the vast majority of fly casting advocates this.  This is because this will keep you from messing up a short cast, and the added time can be used for accuracy.  I use a cast like this when I am casting short – 20’- 40’ but this is not an efficient way to cast.

Obviously, 3 is the answer, but think about it…doing anything in the right instance is pretty close to impossible.  Imagine that the biggest fish you ever did see just appeared 90’ from you, are you really going to trust perfect timing (considering ALL the variables that go into a cast) in order to make that cast?

Luckily we don’t have to.

One of the best techniques to secure perfect timing is what I call the “catch cast.”  A more fitting name would be “Allowing line to slide through your fingers on the final back cast then pinching it to start the forward cast with perfect timing”  I suppose I could make up some snarky Acronym but honestly I just don’t feel like it…I’ve been eating a lot of Kraft dinner lately.  I love Mac and Cheese but I think I need like vegetables or something I mean it’s getting pathetic.  My diet for a year has consisted of Lucky Charms, Wendy’s, and either Uncle Ben’s rice pouches or Kraft dinner.  The part that bothers me is, no word of a lie, I am a certified genius…really high IQ…and I’m basically dying because I’m too stupid to care for myself…I mean leave me out – what does this say about the future of mankind?  Hmmm, that would probably be a good article; I’ll leave this here as a little insight into how I come up with this crap.

The catch cast is easy to perform; the only physical difficulty comes from having to pinch down on the line as it is moving with some force.  Like so many other things, practice is the key.  It really doesn’t matter how much line you allow to shoot, but it should only be on the final back cast.

Actually let me address something right now.  A fly cast should be one back cast one forward cast – no more.  True the ideal standard of a fly caster is some dude in tweed making like 60 back casts to throw a dry fly 20 feet.  This is retarded.  With the MARK (remember that) in your hand and the line under control, a good caster needs to make one back cast, and then one forward cast to send a 5/0 herring pattern 100’.  Now the key to that description is “line under control” very often most of us will strip in the line right to the leader, especially if we are using streamer patterns.  You will need to work the line out beyond the tip again and then use some technique to get it under control.  My preferred method is to shake the tip (snicker) and with the MARK in hand make a roll cast to get those 30 – 40 feet of line straight out in front of me.  Then I can make a back cast motion to get it off the water (in high winds I’d just make a water haul – more on that later,) a forward cast to get it under control, and then finally one back cast and one forward cast.

Now this may seem picky, and it probably is, but keep in mind the less you have to do the less opportunity to screw up, and with heavy flies or air resistant flies the hardest part of a cast is the transition from back cast to forward cast, so it makes sense to eliminate as many of these as possible.  Finally, if you ever want to use a shooting head (and many new lines are essentially shooting heads) the one back cast rule will be one you are thankful for.

Now a few words describing drift.  I personally blame Lefty Kreh – specifically his little handbook – for delaying my understanding of the concept of drift.  Actually, I really don’t this is just an example of why you should seek out multiple sources of instruction, I fully suspect there are people reading this now who will be confused by the words I use and find the book that confused me enlightening.  Kind of like how the Hoff is huge in Germany.

Anyhow here it is – Drift AFTER the positive stop.  Drift is basically repositioning the rod to allow you to have a greater arc for a back or forward cast.  In the case of the back cast the positive stop should end so the back cast is high aiming either straight back or at a slightly upwards angle.  Once the positive stop is made you can reach back as much as you are comfortable, and if you excuse the catch cast, your timing will be perfect.

The drift allows you to make a longer casting arch, to accelerate the rod further, and ultimately generate more force.  What you don’t want is to drift so much that you come out of your casting plane, accelerate too quickly so over this longer period you gain nothing, and finally remember that the positive stop is still the most important component…don’t forget to release the energy that you created.

No drills this time, regrettably but next time we work on the double haul and what I consider the ultimate teaching drill.  Keep practicing the back cast, and don’t forget that you can pantomime a casting motion with out a rod and still gain valuable muscle memory.

“Mirror Mirror on the wall who is fairest of them all?”

“I’ve been ogling women forever and a day,

Even Helen of Troy pales to Aishwarya Rai!”

I figure the Positive Stop is the hardest part of the cast so why not start off with a picture of the most beautiful woman ever to live – all our Mom’s exempted of course.

There is a downside to growing up a fly fisherman, probably more than one but I’ve never considered my lack of social grace to be that big of a concern.  My earliest memories are of fishing, and I can vividly recall the day in first grade when I broke my spin rod riding a bike to a local pond.  My father wasn’t mad, but just asked me directly if I wanted to be a fisherman or a fly fisherman.  I proudly answered a fly fisherman and was rewarded with a fly rod of my very own.

Eight years later, as a freshman in High School, the baseball coach would beg me to be on his team, only to learn the awful truth – I throw like a girl.  Now, this may seem strange but before that day I had never truly thrown a baseball, unless it was for a dog – had never played catch or pickle and didn’t know that a baseball glove is meant for the off-hand.  As I have mentioned before my High School was very small and in order to have a freshman baseball team nearly every guy in the school had to play.  I was literally the 10^th player…I even have a trophy; it wasn’t till years later I realized that it wasn’t just a joke.

In addition to not being able to throw, I couldn’t bat to save my life.  Ironically, this profound lack of skill lead me to be one of the highest point scoring member of our team.  I came to the early conclusion that if the pitcher threw three strikes I was out, if he threw four balls I could go to first base, and if I got hit by a pitch I could go to first base.  Well the average pitcher on a loser division freshman team isn’t exactly Rodger Clemons…so my policy of never ducking and never swinging proved to be a mathematically fortuitous one – albeit at times painful.

The lack of batting ability was pathetic, but throwing like a girl was far more embarrassing.  Actually, I really shouldn’t even use that phraseology since any girl on the softball team could throw a ball faster and more accurately than I.  I would reach back and bring my arm forward as fast as I could, only to stop on a dime, release the ball, and watch it sail a few yards away and fall into the dirt.  It was that bad.  I ended up playing first base (catching I learned pretty quickly) and it was all I could do to get the ball back to the pitcher after an out.

One last point – I would never pretend to understand baseball, way too many rules.  I’d have to say the thing I hated most about it is that it’s impossible to win as a team; you can only lose as one.  Football I understand and enjoy.  Some of the very best plays ever made were ones where one player was double-teamed – essentially removed from the play – which allowed a team-mate to make the highlight reel play of the game.  Commentators and fans may not always get that, but the players understand.  If the Quarterback completes a pass, it’s because his team allowed him to, including the coaches who called the right play at the right time.  You play as a team, win as a team, lose as a team.  Baseball, however, is primarily a collection of distinct individual efforts.  I some ways it’s more like fishing.

Now why did I throw so pathetically?  For years and years, fly casting had trained my arm for the positive stop.

What is a positive stop?

Like most terms used to describe fly casting, this one is not perfect.  The reason I use it rather than Pop/Stop, Speed Stop, or another of the many terms other guys have used over the years is because it refers to both the energy and acceleration of the cast.

Acceleration is not speed…it really refers to change.  To keep things simple, during the casting motion you are either creating or losing energy.  You create energy by increasing the speed of the casting stroke, and not surprisingly you lose energy by slowing down.  Stopping, releases the energy of the cast into the line.  So, as your rod moves through a cast it should speed up, getting faster and faster until you stop abruptly and release all the energy into the cast.

The key to doing this is twofold.  First you need to constantly speed up the cast…so you have to make a controlled motion.  If you flail your arm as fast as you can, then you aren’t speeding up, you are merely moving your arm as fast as you can (or worse slowing a bit and losing energy.)  A good cast is a smooth acceleration, constantly adding energy.

The second aspect is the stop itself.  Simply put the rod comes to a complete and instantaneous halt.  In this moment the bent rod releases its stored energy into the line and the cast sails off.  The best simile is to say the release of energy is like using a bow and arrow.  If the string is drawn back and released the energy is maximized, if the string is drawn back…then slowly brought forward, then released the power is significantly reduced.

The positive stop is sometimes difficult for a person to learn…especially an athletic person, since most sports – like baseball – encourage the participant to “follow through.”  Though no aspect of fly casting is truly physical, it is my opinion that the positive stop is the most challenging to learn.  The other challenges inherent in fly casting tend to be ones of timing.  Also the positive stop is the component that most benefits from muscle memory training…so if this is difficult for you, practice can fix it.

First step however is to feel it.

There are a few ways to cheat to achieve a near perfect positive stop.

You can hold the fly rod in reverse…turn the grip so the fly reel is braced against your lower wrist.

You can strip some line off the reel and use it to tie the butt of the rod to your wrist.

You can use the device the Wulff Wrist-lock.

All three of these achieve the same end.  I suggest you use one of them just a time or two for not other reason than to demonstrate to yourself how much power is in a fly cast – and how much you can do with it when you learn how to release it.

All you need to do is make a forward cast.  To practice this I suggest you lay out the line straight on the ground as you did to practice the backcast, with the only difference being that this time the line is behind you and your rod tip is raised to a position where you would have finished a theoretical backcast.  Keep in mind this drill is to work on the positive stop nothing else.  Make sure there is no slack between the rod tip and where the line reaches the ground.

Now just make a forward cast, use a smooth acceleration, and when you get to the point for the positive stop the mechanics of the reel position, Wrist-Lock, or having the rod tied to you will force you to stop.  You should feel the line spring from the rod tip with incredible force.  This will NOT be pretty, and obviously this is not how you will cast on the water, but pay attention to what happens and be honest can you generate this level of force with your current positive stop.

Now for the really really good news – this practice set up of casting off the grass is a horrible method of loading a rod…so the force that you just experienced – possibly the most you have witnessed in a fly rod is basically nothing…a true cast has much more.

When you are comfortable with your understanding of how much power you can generate it will be time to unfetter yourself.  Untie the rod, remove the Wrist-lock, and hold the rod with a normal grip.  Make the same cast and see how well you can stop the rod.  Without the crutch it is up to you, but you also have more control and eventually greater accuracy.

Here are a few things that will help.

A visual aid can work wonders.  The two I recommend are fashioned from pool noodles.  The first is George Robert’s rod stopper. It is nothing more than two dowels set up like a T – the pool noodle being on the crossbar.  You place it in the ground in front of you and stop your cast before the rod hits it.  The brightly colored pool noodle gives you a visual reference, but the physical aspect of the positive stop is all on you.  The second one is simply a pool noodle on a rope strung before you like a clothesline.  They both work the same way use the better one for your practice environment.

I also recommend that you read as much as you can from various sources about this phase of the cast – but be aware that the term “positive stop” most likely won’t be used.  People learn in various ways and what I describe may not make sense to you.  It’s just the nature of life.  To me the easiest way to affect the stop is to grip the rod hard.  Most teachers would never advise this, but I think by closing one’s grip the muscles in the forearm contract and essentially stop the rod.  Also don’t worry about stopping the rod too abruptly and having the line crash into the tip…in fact I want you to do the opposite of worry about it and try to make that exact thing happen…odds are you wont be able to, but by trying you’ll learn to throw and incredibly tight loop.

Have Fun.

Decided to get back to Flyosophy’s roots: finding tenuous reasons to post pics of beautiful women with musical talent.  Playing the piano is probably the third hottest thing a woman can do fully dressed…I’ll leave it up to your imagination to discover the second.  Naturally, the first is making a Bacon Cheeseburger Meatloaf.

Back to your regularly scheduled article…

The effectiveness of the Muscle Memory Methodology of teaching depends entirely on one variable.

How much you practice.

Now a lot of what I detail here will sound like crap, but honestly doesn’t everything I write.  There will be a number of drills and practice exercises involving what may seem like New Age BS.  Pantomiming, casting without a rod, and a number of warm up exercises, none of it seems to make sense.  I thought so myself as I was learning.  Seems to reason that if one wants to learn how to cast or cast more efficiently then they ought to – I don’t know – cast a rod, maybe.

The method, however, is based on building what is known as “muscle memory.”  Like most things it is kind of a misnomer, since it’s really a brain thing.  Many of the things we do that require fine motor control was learned by muscle memory rather than actively controlling the muscles.  Things like brushing your teeth, walking, and probably the most interesting: speech.  Consider all the muscle contractions that your tongue must make to form sounds for speech…you do not ACTIVELY control any of it.  Ever wonder why people who learn a foreign language speak it with an accent?   The leading theory is because of muscle memory.

One quick story, I once dated a girl who was a concert pianist.  She could play Beethoven, Mozart, the Undertaker’s entrance theme, you name it.  However, every day for hours she would play scales…essentially to exercise her fingers.  She would also practice individual pieces of music but only after the basic stuff.  Practicing a piece of music helped her play that piece; the scales trained her for everything. She never had to think about which finger for which key, just the music.  She was good…she practiced a LOT – eventually got annoying had to dump her, she also got pissed by the way I related classical music to Loony Tunes Cartoons.  So I dated her friend from MIT – glasses + lab coat = sexy, but I digress.  Ok the second hottest thing a woman can do fully clothed is: Science, especially if it involves explosions.

If only there was some ancient maxim I could reference to get the point that practice is important across.

“Practice is everything.  This is often misquoted as practice makes perfect.”

Periander

Periander was the “Tyrant” of Corinth in the 7^th century BC – granted details are sketchy…he may have killed and then raped his wife’s body (or as Herodotus says “Periander baked his bread in a cold oven” – tell you what my wife’s oven was so cold I got frostbite on my junk – ZING) he might have had the sons of his political rivals castrated, but he abolished taxes for his constituency so that make him my kind of tyrant.  (This is the Flyosopher and I approve this message.)  I agree with his observation too: practice is everything especially when dealing with muscle memory.  Once you have this down, you still have to practice – albeit for a much shorter time each day.  Now is there some risk in making fly fishing less fun?  Depends – there are guys who play Nerf football, guys who trained hard and played in college, and finally guys who trained to an insane level and play in the NFL.  Who has the most fun?  It’s just a matter of getting what you want.

Unlike football, everyone can get to a point where they can cast an entire fly line with ease every time they want to.  Age, strength, arm length, DNA, doesn’t matter.  Practice enough and you will succeed. Also for the D’bags in the readership (every time there is a casting demo this question comes up…if I ruled the Earth it would be followed by a vicious beating):

“Mr. Flyosopher I heard that you never need to cast more than 30 feet.”

Nameless Feeb

“Well, student of mine that may be true.  It is also true that casting a full fly line is more about efficiency than distance.  If you learn to cast 90’ or 100’ you can make your 30’ cast with a far greater economy of effort, you can do it when it’s windy, and you can do it with a heavy fly or a long leader.  See having ability doesn’t mean you use it all the time…like I am charming and dashing a real ladies man.  Sometimes I have to dress fine, go places with tablecloths and violin guys, quote Shakespeare all that crap,  but for a skank like your sister I just don my “Who Farted?” hat and go to a McPuke’s drive-thru and the slut is on my disco stick for a cheeseburger.  Understand now?”

The Flyosopher

Get yourself geared for class

Rod – the heavier the better – the reason is simple the heavier the rod the easier it is to feel the rod load against the resistance of the line and the more force you can generate with a double haul, drift and all the other crap we’ll be learning. Light rods perform exactly the same way so the skills carry over, but for now we want to make things as easy to learn as possible.

Line – WF Floating to match the rod. Over-lining is a popular technique and it has its uses. Using a greater mass allows the rod to load more easily; it also allows one to cast heavier flies. There is a price however a more massive line requires more force to cast – this can rob distance. It also can easily become a crutch so we want to avoid it for now. After you graduate you can do whatever the hell you want, and more importantly you’ll know why you want to do what you want. For now I want the load to be created by you, and what you are doing, not by a more massive line.

Reel – I don’t give a crap. Only point of advice I’ll give is that a heavier reel helps keep the tip up. People talk about balance and “light in the hand” whatever. A reel that is too light is like a sword without a pommel.

Leader – This doesn’t really matter for now, in the real world the leader may be the single most important decision a fly fisherman makes. For now just get something on there that is tapered, and tie a piece of yarn to the end. I don’t want to hear that whip cracking sound – it reminds The Flyosopher of a period of his life of which he is not particularly proud.

This is an important part of the entire course. Check the line to see where it transitions form the fat part to the skinny part. This should be tapered, but this taper will vary from company to company. What I want you to do is find the very end of the taper where it becomes a constant skinny running line. Now play out line till this point is at the first guide. Basically what we want is to have all the Fat line or “head” outside the tip, and the taper running down the guide. You want to mark your line where your line hand would grip it to achieve this balance.  I have gotten in the habit of using a piece of braided mono slipped over the line and held in place with two tiny nail knots which I coat with Pliobond.  I like it because I generally fish at night and when I feel this braid I know I am ready to stop stripping and start casting.  For daytime practice a marker works just as well.

Feel like a dweeb? If you ever go to a casting tournament try and sneak a peek at the competitor’s lines, more than most of them will be marked. Someday when a line company begs me to endorse their product I’ll have them make a distance casting line with such a mark, I’ll also have them make a beginner’s line with the same mark and taper – the distance line will sell for 40-60% more, the shirtless picture of me that comes inside the box is more than worth the added price..

The end result is this if you have the line out and the mark in your hand you have the perfect amount of line beyond the tip to load the rod, not just for a 30 ‘, or 50’, or even 60’ cast but to cast that whole line. Now some very good casters can use the running line to add power to their casts, heck some guys can use the whole line to power the cast and shoot backing – I’m not those guys.

Now this amount of line (generally 30’) – is dependent upon the line brand and style you are using, for some it may only be 26′ others closer to 40’.  I would call it the “head” but I don’t want to confuse it with a shooting head so I refer to it by the “Mark,” sounds better than the first – it’s only important that you know what we are referring to – the line outside the tip when you have the mark you made in your hand..

Finally, eventually we will be shooting line – just not right now. If you are a pretty good caster you may be already in the habit of double hauling…that’s fine. But to get the most out of these exercises its best if you don’t haul – now personally I don’t think I could do that my left hand just automatically makes a hauling motion due to years of muscle memory. If you must haul do these two things 1. Don’t allow line to slip through your fingers 2. Don’t allow slack into your cast – very often after a haul the caster “pushes” line back into the cast by bringing his hands together (this is especially true of guy who make those heroic cross body hauls) all this does is kill your cast. Now for these first few 40′ casts you can get away with it, but when we start casting 90′ you need you stroke to be as efficient as possible, and slack is your worst enemy.

Slack is your worst enemy.  Give up the grudge you have against the captain of your High School football team who stole your girlfriend, gave her an STD, and then gave her back.  You can kill him later.  For now, you have to concentrate on eliminating slack.

Fly casting is not rocket science; it’s barely even brain surgery. Simple as it is you do need to learn it.

Drill – Backcast Practice – If possible video tape yourself

Setup – lay the line straight on the lawn before you. Hold the rod in a comfortable position to cast with your hand on the Mark – the tip of your rod should be touching the ground and there should be NO slack in the line. If you raise the rod tip and create slack – simply lower the tip and take a step back to remove the slack – you are ready.

Exercise – Make a single smooth casting stroke and stop the rod. What we are looking to do is make a backcast that causes the line to land straight behind you completely unrolled with enough force that you feel a slight tug or kick (enjoy this feeling because you may never feel it again.) After the cast the line simply falls to Earth. You turn around, take a step back to remove slack if you must and repeat. What you are trying to develop is a sense of “feel.” The feel you develop via this exercise is 98.2% of EVERYTHING you need to cast 100+’ of distance.

I find the very best way to do this exercise is with your eyes closed, and done as slowly as possible. It’s better to go too slow and fail to straighten the backcast, than to go too fast and not feel the load.

You may also note that there is no mention of lifting the line off the water – that’s because we are casting on grass for this. Later we will cast on water, our effective stroke will be shorter but we’ll have the surface tension to help load the rod. If you think that you can make this backcast without requiring the full distance of the stroke from ground – then good job missing the point. Making the cast is the smallest part of mastering it.

So what does this feeling feel like? When you hold the rod at the ready you feel only the weight of the rod itself, as you accelerate you should feel the rod band and the rod – line system become heavier. The line is resisting the movement; you need to constantly increase this resistance by moving the rod faster and faster. When you stop the rod, all heaviness should disappear – the load was completely unloaded and the line is moving on its own.

Why is this so important? Because when we cast further we will need to make a much longer stroke which means not only drifting, but also maintaining a controlled acceleration over a longer period. This feeling will help you learn to do that, and to correct mistakes when they come up.

You are also developing muscle memory which will help to make this cast automatic.  This is the equivalent of a golfer practicing his swing, or a pianist playing the scales.  As a fly caster the basic backcast is your bread and butter, learn this and casting becomes a breeze, fail to learn this and you will never experience true casting freedom.  Honestly, with the bazillion things to think about during a fishing trip casting should have no place in your mind.

If possible do this exercise for 10 minutes every other day – just so you know this is the longest and hardest part of the whole deal, and the bad news is the more experienced you are its likely the longer it will take you to develop this feel. Why? Ironically, because of muscle memory…use your off-arm the learning will be faster.
Also don’t be surprised if you make a cast and think you felt it then make 10 more and don’t – learning this is similar to learning how to bike ride – takes a while to get it but once you do you’ll have a hard time even remembering what it was not to feel a loaded rod.

Also do not over-look the value of making a casting motion with your arm without holding a rod.  Pantomiming the casting stroke will help to build muscle memory, however, I think it is best to develop the feel first.  I know you will look like a moron standing on the grass making half a cast over and over and over again.  Roberts in his DVD recommends doing this for MONTHS before making a forward cast.  I think it can be learned sooner but you need to continuously re-visit this…to this day I practice my cast and this is what I do for warm ups – it sounds like a lot but honestly 10 minutes is less time than it takes to find the materials to tie a fly.

Have fun, next up a few more drills and the positive stop.

There is an old adage in education. One can only teach those willing to learn.  Like most sayings, it is true to a point.  Back when I was a teacher you would hear this primarily as an excuse for poor test scores.  The inverse of this is also true, to a point.  That if a student has a profound desire to learn, no teacher is necessary.  History has no end of great scholars, artists, and scientists who were all self-taught.

I personally believe that the primary role of a teacher for younger students is to show the value of learning…not so much the knowledge.  So as a history teacher, focusing on dates and factual events could lead a student to the cliché question “When are we ever going to need to know this?”  Honestly the answer is never, and with today’s modern wireless devices the entire world’s knowledge is literally at one’s fingertips – memorizing dates is really just for quiz shows.  However, if the same lesson focused on skills, for example critical thinking…the “why” of the historical events, the same tired question becomes one easily answered.  I am teaching you this, so that you will be able to learn whatever you desire to know.

“The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life – by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality.  The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual.  He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove.  He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past – and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.”

Ayn Rand

In short the ultimate goal of learning is to learn how to learn.  May sound foolish, but in many ways this is far more important in this day and age than it has ever been.  For instance knowledge facts like: when was the Battle of Hastings – are only a few key clicks away on a cell phone.  Knowledge is a freely traded commodity and its value is fairly low.  Wisdom, understanding, and the ability to process information into original thought that is true power. Consider fly patterns…a simple Google search will yield you all the patterns you could want – provided you know basic tying techniques, and most important if you know how to use them: where and when – you get the idea.

Fly fishing has a number of skills that I feel many of us have learned more or less by rote.  Leaders, knots, basic water reading, and fly casting are all skills that one simply doesn’t learn and cross off a list.  In fact, given the nature of fly fishing a change or adaptation in one component causes a change in another.  For instance, a fly cast is differently with a long leader compared to  shorter one or a heavy fly.  Naturally, there are a near infinite range of possibilities and most fly fishermen make adjustments without really having to think about it.

When it comes to fly casting, however, there is something of a downside to learning.  Much of the “knowledge” of fly casting is tied to muscle memory which (like riding a bike) is somewhat involuntary.  The good news is that a good caster can do everything he needs to almost instinctively.  The bad news is if an experienced caster wants to learn a new style of casting, technique or more importantly, to correct a bad habit he may have had and lived with for years – it is exceedingly difficult to do so.  As Yoda said, “You must unlearn what you have learned.”  But how do you unlearn something that is not known to your conscious mind?

In my region, the rivers are small, the ocean is big.  It’s not uncommon for an angler with years and years of river experience to want to transition to fishing the ocean.  However, poor casting technique can be a killer when one needs to increase distance or deal with a powerful headwind.  In New England, to be an incredibly successful trout angler one may never need to cast more than…actually one doesn’t really have to cast at call, a simple roll cast is more than adequate much of the time.  An inefficient, but perfectly useful, river cast will not serve the needs of a saltwater angler.

Even if this caster knows exactly what his faults are, is willing to practice, and even if he has the most skilled instructor to assist him, overcoming his own knowledge may prove extremely difficult.  If only there was some magical way to travel back in time and teach himself the right way to cast first.

Oh but there is, and you don’t even need Dr. Who.

More often than not – it’s that thing attached to your other shoulder – your left arm – or if you are a more sinister member of our fellowship the right.

When I took my fall the future usefulness of my right arm was cast in doubt, so two days after the accident I was practicing with my left.  What surprised me was not how quickly I learned – it actually was a slow process to build the muscle memory, but how after a few weeks my casting with my left arm was technically superior to casting with my right.

My right arm has nearly 30 years of experience, however, it learned to cast under less than ideal conditions.  Like nearly everyone, I learned as I went.  I read books, took a lesson or two, and just screw up a lot until I got it to work.  My left arm, on the other hand – get it? Oh man I apologize this topic is dry but I needed a segue way to some casting articles – was trained by an experienced caster.  A blank slate free of any bad habits, I learned a much better form.  Even though my left arm will never be as coordinated as my right, it doesn’t punch casts, shock rods, over overpower loops.  When you tech your off-arm, it listens.

Even better, when my right arm healed and I started using it again the lessons from the left transferred over.  Sometimes I think the best way to learn something you already know is to learn something completely different – in much the same way by learning to cast two-handed rods I improved my technique and ability with one handed rods.

So if you are ever trying to learn some casting technique, or if you are trying to perfect your casting skills, I highly recommend trying the new material with your off-arm.  Its lack of muscle memory will be a godsend.

In the next few articles I am planning to detail an efficient casting course.  There are many theories about how a person should learn to cast and how a person learns really anything.  If this helps you, great, if it doesn’t then leave it be.  My only advice to the more experienced guys is to try this lesson plan with your off-arm first.

Last thing:  this process is not my idea – I have tweaked it a bit.  My father used many of these techniques to teach me, I also know the LL Bean Outdoor Discovery school uses a similar method, and probably the best aid would be “Saltwater Casting: 10 Steps to Distance and Power” a DVD by George Roberts in my opinion the single best casting DVD on the market – and I watch a lot of them.  The method is all about drilling…in fact you don’t make a single cast for the first few WEEKS.

Ya that’s right WEEKS – the Flyosopher doesn’t make BS promises if you truly want to improve your cast it takes TIME and PRACTICE.  But hey its winter, what the hell else you going to do go ice fishing…ice fishing is like kissing your sister (For those of you in the South I mean to say it is not much fun…I’m sure your sister is lovely.)

2009 has not been my best year, and I doubt I’ll be sad to see it go. 

I rang in 2009 on a snow covered highway with a flat tire.  I had been working and there are a few things about my job which you should know to fully appreciate what happened next.  I essentially work inside a computer, the rooms I perform my tasks in are very warm, so I’ve never gotten in the habit of wearing a warm jacket, a hat gloves, that sort of thing.  Secondly, my shift ends at midnight, great for striper season, not so great during a snowstorm on New Year’s Eve.  So when I started changing the tire in the sub-zero temperatures, I was dressed in a Justice League Tee-shirt and a pair of jeans.  Before I could screw together the crank to free the spare, I had lost all feeling in my hands.

If you have ever changed a tire on a pick-up truck, you will understand that there is an additional step after you get the lug nuts loosened; you have to get the flat tire free which is almost always rusted in place.  Not the hardest thing to do, but when you have the truck up on a crappy jack with nothing but ice beneath it you tend not to be as aggressive as you may need to be…at least I wasn’t I was concerned about knocking the jack out and dropping the truck so what should have taken a minute or two, took a lot longer.  The fact that I’m pretty sure my brain was starting to show signs of hypothermia probably didn’t help much.  Keep in mind I had to kneel, and at one point lay down, in the snow to get the jack in position…both my tee-shirt and jeans were wet.

Still I managed; I got the spare on, secured the flat and was in the process of stowing the jack when a cruiser pulled up behind me.  Forgot to mention, the two-lane highway wasn’t exactly plowed well and the flat tire was on the driver’s side.  The first few times a car passed me I thought I’d get killed, then I started kind of hoping for a graze and a warm ride in an ambulance.  The flashing blues seemed like a Godsend until the officer started asking questions like: “So how much New Year Cheer did you have?” and word to the wise, walking in a straight line is slightly difficult when you can’t feel your frozen feet.  Eventually I convinced him that I wasn’t drunk, just nearly frozen to death, took a while, and I started to get concerned when I wasn’t feeling all that cold anymore.

Finally I was back on my way home.  My house had been sold and so all of the furniture and most of the belongings had been placed in storage. All that remained was a Coleman inflatable mattress, a milk crate, a TV (cable was off) and my beloved Xbox 360 and my even more beloved Daisy – a Golden Retriever.  I figured I could live like this for a few weeks (it would end up being eight months – more on that later.)  I had never been so happy to get home and couldn’t wait for a warm shower, a hot cup of chamomile tea, and to get tucked into my mat and play some Grand Theft Auto – hopefully to have beautiful dreams about running over pedestrians and keeping my pimp hand strong.

Little concerned when I walked to the front door and the sensor light didn’t snap on.  Then really concerned when Daisy burst through the door and her fur was as chilled as my skin.  The power was out, no heat, no hot-water, no shower, no tea chamomile or otherwise.  I had a fireplace but no matches, lighters, or ambition.  So I collected my dog, allowed her to finally sleep under the covers, and lied to her as I drifted off into what may have been a shallow hypothermic coma, “Well Daisy, if this is the way 2009 starts, it can only get better.” 

It didn’t.

Within a week the deal on the house fell through, my ex-wife stole my dog, and I started to doubt that eating naught but celery and peanut butter was a sound, healthy life strategy.  I felt the isolation of a Cape Cod winter start to mess with my already addled mind. So I tried dating, which is usually a bad idea.  I met a nice girl who left a message to cancel our third date because she was in the hospital.  I was shocked and worried.  I visited her and the elevator to her floor opened to reveal two choices:  Maternity and “Ring Bell.”  I thought the plain “Ring Bell” door was the lesser and more likely of the two evils.  I rang and after having the flowers I brought along with my person thoroughly searched, I found that I was now in the land of lost.  Before the end of the day, I was seated in a cafeteria my left hand playing Trivial Pursuits (and kicking ass) against the substance abusers, while my right played Candyland (I lost despite cheating) with the bewildered and the blank. 

This was one of my better days.

The house lingered in a stagnant market, yet I was too stubborn to move my furniture back (I did dig out my tying supplies however.)  I think I have permanent marks on my ass from sitting on that milk crate.  When the house finally sold I bought another but had a five week stretch with nowhere to live.  Luckily it was the summer so I just slept on the beach…of course had it been anytime but the summer I could have found a cheap rental.  I’ll never forget the look on the kid’s face who discovered me in the bath house at West Dennis Beach brushing my teeth, or when I over-heard his father explain how some people aren’t as fortunate as others.

Then there were the sad number of events that don’t make for amusing stories.  My little family became littler, tight finances became tighter, and the people I want to see most I tend to see less.  Some of this is my own damn fault, and lot of it is due to the simple tides of fortune, none of it makes much sense to me. 

Also, for whatever reason, in 2009 every time I had a decision to make I made the wrong one for the wrong reasons.  I lost a lot this year simply because I wasn’t acting like myself.  I can deal with making mistakes, heck I rather enjoy it in certain situations, and there is no better way to learn.  This was different.  This year I learned just how much of myself I’ve lost – how much insecurity, fear, and weakness has managed to overcome joy, intelligence, and confidence.  I thought the fall had cost me a mere three inches of height, seems I lost a bit more of the stuff that can’t easily be measured.  A lot can happen when you aren’t paying attention, or rather paying attention to the wrong things. 

Suffice to say if the ball drops and lands on my head, I really won’t be that surprised.

Still, there was fishing.

Not the best year perhaps, but despite economic, social, and personal turmoil the tides came in and out.  Fish went about their business whether or not I was there to bother them.  Whenever I came across a group of guys with long rods, even if they were in my spot, more often than not the only sore feelings were in our cheeks from laughing so hard.  As much as things change, it is nice to know some things really don’t.  It seems strange to consider a hobby like a friend, but fishing has always been there for me.  To cheer me when I’m blue, to fill days that would otherwise be spent doing something productive.  It is love.  I think of the sea when I ought to be working and I am distracted by her beauty.  I hold memories of her that may be years and years old as though they were just yesterday, and as pathetic and dramatic as it sounds, I feel it would break my heart if I couldn’t be near her. 

The waters can be quiet when you need quiet, murmur a sweet song when your soul is too loud, or they can come down with a fury when you need a reminder of just how small you are, and thus how small your problems are.  Men don’t cry, but if hypothetically, an eighth of a ton ex-linebacker thinks of a small white box while drifting at sea in a kayak, the ocean will hide that for him and keep it secret.  Like a good friend.

I don’t know what is in store come 2010.  I hope for happier times, when fun and cheer outweigh the struggles and tears.  I don’t put a lot of faith in hopes.  Rather that which is known or can be learned.  I know that the mistakes I make in 2010, will not be repeats of the ones I made in 2009 – that is a comfort.  I know that I will appreciate more that which is temporary, which is largely everything, most especially the happy times enjoyed with friends and with family.  I will honor that which is more lasting, writings and knowledge, the love of a family, the loyalty of a pet, and the section of my soul which thirsts for saltwater. 

Life is worth the trouble it takes to live it and the respect it is due to be lived well.  We are owed nothing, yet we have a new year, a chance to change our direction, or trim the sails.  To stand humbly but boldly on the crossroads of chance and opportunity, and do the best we can.  It is all a free person will ever need.

See you next year.

Seriously, let’s look at the Holiday Season in a little more depth, specifically the five major holidays which of which the season is comprised: Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, and New Years Day.   

Christmas is the big daddy of the season, in fact it is likely Kwanzaa or Festivus would not even exist without it, and Hanukkah would most likely be reduced to what it historically was a fairly minor Jewish holiday.  (I mean come on Olive Oil for lamps lasting eight days instead of one may be Al Gore’s wet dream, but have you read the Bible?  Pillars of Fire, plagues, hot chicks, walls falling down at the sound of a trumpet…this, by comparison, is a pretty lame miracle – unless it was the Olive Oil served with bread at an Italian restaurant lasting…that would be a miracle)  Christmas dominates the last few weeks of November and the entire month of December, no other Holiday even comes close.  Now some may look at this as a good thing.  After all Christmas is on the surface the celebration for the birth of Jesus, the person who according to approximately 80% of Americans, is the Savior of mankind (Mr. Socko, on more than one occasion, saved Mankind the Wrestler don’t confuse the two.)  Important as this may be, I don’t mean to imply that it isn’t, religion simply is not the primary motivator for Christmas’s dominance.  On a religiousness scale, Easter is a bazillion times more important than Christmas – yet holds none of cultural dominance, heck even the oft neglected Pentecost is of greater purely religious importance.  So the expression – Christ is the reason for the season, falls a little flat.  I’ll even go so far as to say it isn’t true.

Santa and his secular minions aren’t the true meaning of Christmas either.  As a child I was afraid of Santa, then as a slightly older child I vehemently hated him.  Who was Santa to judge me?  Sure I fought with my brother and maybe I did dye the dog’s fur, but what gives Santa the right?  Yes, I got coal – a few times, what I never got was the point…or justice.

So let’s get away from Christmas and look at two new comers.  Kwanzaa and Festivus are essentially the same – well Festivus is at least fun and inclusive.  They exist solely as alternatives to Christmas.  Kwanzaa was created in 1966 and is essentially an African-American cultural celebration.  Which seems fine, as a person who values history, I enjoy most cultural celebrations – especially the Greek ones involving goat cheese – that stuff is great.  One’s religion, however, is a big part of his culture, and given that a strong majority of African-American’s are Christian and thus celebrate Christmas – Kwanzaa always felt a bit stand-offish, as though Karenga wanted to celebrate the African-American culture he desired but did not truly exist.   My biggest complaint with Kwanzaa is that it is purely an American Holiday, yet exspouses non-American values – like Socialism and doing things for the “community” and more importantly the “leader” of said “community.”  American values are rugged individualism, self-expression, and telling the English to suck it.  Kwanzaa has its roots in Black Nationalism which advocates separation, including separation from Christianity often described as a White religion that should be shunned, and thus so should Christmas.     

“To give Blacks an alternative to the existing holiday and give Blacks an opportunity to celebrate themselves and history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.”

Maulana Karenga – Inventor of Kwanzaa

Maulana Karenga (this name he gave himself means “Our Master the Nationalist” here’s a tip NEVER follow a guy who calls himself The Master – it never ends well)  also did time for felony assault.  No, he didn’t beat up some white guys, but rather bound and tortured a couple of women – whipped them with electrical cords, beat them with batons, and used soldering irons on them.  Seems Socialists who make up holidays always tend to be ungentlemanly – wait till Earth day.  So true, I don’t have a lot of use or respect for Kwanzaa – especially the name – comes from Swahili – an East African language.  If you really wanted to trace the cultural effects of slavery on African-Americans why wouldn’t you at least use a West African language…oh yeah that’s right Karenga learned his language skills from the Nation of Islam where Swahili makes far more sense yet still it only became a major language because of German and British colonial efforts.  Couldn’t even do an hour’s worth of research.

Offended? – not that I care just curious.  But now let’s be fair, if Kwanzaa is getting bashed because its founder wasn’t a saint, had his own poorly concealed agenda which ran counter to the mainstream of the land in which he lived, and hitched his wagon to a beloved popular holiday of the very culture he was trying to under-mine?  Isn’t that pretty much a parallel for the history of Christmas?  It pretty much is…coal again this year.   

Keep in mind there was a time, long before the first Christmas, when Sol Invictus “The Unconquered Sun” was celebrated by nearly everyone.  What self-respecting pagan wouldn’t want to worship the sun?  It may be just a big ball of gas but we would be so screwed without it.  Modern physics claims that the molecules in our bodies were forged in the core of the sun.  Makes you wonder about the Pagan dimwits who worshiped a stupid tree.  Ya there was that too, and yes Christmas does have more than a few tree-related themes and customs.  Probably the most time-honored tradition of any time-honored tradition is that when you start up a new one, make sure you pig-a-back it to an old one.

So Christmas falls nearly on what was traditionally a Roman holiday, later or earlier depending on your point of view it would do much the same to the druids and whoever else noticed the true meaning of Christmas.  Wait the Romans were great a lot of things, but they pretty much took their culture from the places they conquered.  So it is a fair bet that long before the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti  “the birthday of the unconquered Sun” there was probably a Eutruscan or Latin or Celtic festival of a similar theme…or at least similar placement on the calendar.   

 So what is the true meaning of Christmas then?  Gather close my children and I will teach you, for it is this.

Winter sucks.

Since the dawn of human history, in the Northern Hemisphere, people have gotten drunk, danced, and feasted at or around the winter Soltice, because everyone knows that winter sucks ass.  Fishing is all but impossible…ya I’ve heard about Steelheading, I’ve also heard about not freezing my nads off…guess which one seems more enjoyable.  The reason for all these winter festivals is simple: what the hell else are you going to do?  I’m sure some people enjoy being around their families, some folk may even have friends, but for me Christmas time means I work, go home, and play Xbox in my underwear – possibly while gulping egg nog to get even fatter so I have more weight to lose come New Year’s resolution time.  Bah Humbug! 

I have no idea if three thousand years from know people will still celebrate Christmas or Kwanzaa or perhaps Festivus…but I am sure that there will be someone trying to “modernize” the world’s oldest tradition, just as I’m sure there will be people bitching about it on both sides of the argument.  This isn’t a cyncial snipe, rather I take a measure of comfort from this.  Whatever you celebrate I hope it is a good one and that you never lose sight of why you are doing that which you are doing…to be happy during the most miserable season.

Seriously I need a Sugar-Momma to fly (and spank) my ass to Florida for four months…I’ll do anything…ANYTHING…yes that too.

Not physically tied of course.  My father had me sitting in front of a vise literally before I can remember.  When other kids were watching Big Bird with joy and love, I was pondering how best to murder him and use his feathers to hackle Seaducers.  It was a strange childhood.  Like that time in art class, I drew an Easter Basket with a bear trap hidden beneath the eggs, chocolate and plastic grass. I needed some Zonker strips.  I suppose in some ways this could have been taken as a sign of mental illness, at least the teacher thought so.  Then there was the Christmas I spent the evening in front of the TV playing with two spools of tippet material, practicing my blood knots, not sure how old I was but I know that I believed Santa brought them…and it was easy enough for my father to convince me that I’d get naught but coal if a trout managed to defeat one of my knots. 

I suppose by a certain set of standards my father could be considered the worst parent ever.  He encouraged me to play with knives; he would sift the marshmallows from the Lucky Charms then eat them citing that he was an adult and could do as he wanted, I was stuck with the oats or whatever and felt dejected and unlucky.  He taught me to never ever tell anyone the truth about a fishing spot.  If it was good say you got skunked, if it was horrible say it was great.  This was best used one evening.  After we had fished and caught a limit of trout at some lake, on the ride home my father stopped at the local park which had a small fishless pond/puddle.  There were no trees so this was one of the places where I first learned to fly cast.  My dad placed the stringer in the pond, rigged up his fiberglass rod and handed it to me.  He offered sage encouragements like “What are you retarded?” and the one I have regretted since my first report card, “A-student huh?”  Hard to feel smart with an Elk-hair Caddis in your ass…but kind of hard to feel stupid when you are fishing.

So I was there flailing away, when some kindly know-it-all stopped by to tell me there where no fish and I was wasting my time.  Now my mother had beaten traditional morals into me with a wooden spoon (in later years the wooden spoon would break and Kid liberation reigned supreme for the 2.9 seconds it took her to fetch the metal slotted spoon – that hurt.)  Respect your elders, don’t talk back, no matter what grandma says just accept it as gospel and nod politely.  So I shrugged, and tried to indicate I was practicing.

“No need to be humble, son.”

The guy looked over to my dad who was holding the stringer of rainbow trout in the classic hero stance with a douche-grin a mile wide. 

“No one catches trout here.” The man blathered.

“Ever see anyone fly fishing here?”  My father asked with a hint of shock, a teaspoon of shame, and the perfect garnish of fear that he may have just revealed his secret spot. 

The conversation ended and we left quickly.  The next night when we were down at the park to play Frisbee with my mother and siblings, there were three guys fishing the puddle.  My father was never one to talk to another guy while fishing, but that night he asked each guy if they had any luck.  Surprisingly enough, they hadn’t.

Luckily for all of us, my mother was everything my father wasn’t.  So though it is arguable he wasn’t much of a parent in his own right, I have no doubt that I had the best set of parents a kid could want.

What I didn’t have was a lot of friends, or more honestly any.  I had just started at a new school, and I was awkward, dorky, and more or less incapable of communicating due to a fairly severe speech impediment.  So naturally I got picked on a lot.  I’d be standing in the lunch line and this rotten kid Matty would punch me and cut in line.  Now it didn’t hurt, at least not nearly as badly as the 30-50 beating a day I suffered at the hands of my older sister, but it did confuse me and I never knew how to respond.

Some teacher called my mom to tell her what was happening…this was before schools adopted “No Place for Hate” policies…hate was part of the curriculum, some of the best parts really.  My father inquired if I had tried violence.  I hadn’t, in all honestly the kid’s punches were so feeble it barely registered with me that he was trying to hurt me.  Still cooler heads prevailed (for a time) and my mom though it would be better if I joined a group to make friends, and that’s how I became a Cub Scout. 

I should mention that I had no interest in the Scout Law or helping old ladies, my mother had sold me on one key point.  The Cub Scouts had a Father Son Fishing Derby.  Even as a kid I knew what that meant – Revenge!!! 

That’s right my fellow Scouts – sell your stale candy, make your pathetic arts and crafts, bow to your Den Mother…but come Columbus Day I shall destroy you all.  Akela can’t save you from my wrath.     

Though there was a prize for the biggest fish, the grand prize went to the team who caught the most fish.  At the pond we would be fishing that meant bluegill and perch.  I had learned from my older sister that the best way to catch a sunfish was to take a tiny ball of beard and place it on the very tip of the hook.  Worms worked but more often than not the fish would pick the slimy things apart and avoid the hook.  Luckily I have always been a mean little punk, and I knew that if you sat on the dock and flicked the big black ants into the water the fish would eat them.  So a small hook made to look like an ant would be best, that way I could catch more and more fish without having to re-bait the hook.

So I sat at my father’s desk and on a size-14 hook wrapped a black hackle between two over-sized balls of black dubbing.  The proportions were wrong, the fly lacked grace and balance, and I know that this pattern has been tied for eons, yet I consider this my first fly.  I knew the situation I would be fishing, I knew the behavior of the fish I would be targeting, and most importantly, I knew how I wanted to catch them.

I have come to believe that the single biggest moment in a fly fisherman’s life is when he knows that a fly is not only as effective as conventional gear, but in certain situations more effective.  In this moment the fisherman stops doing what he has heard or read or been taught – stops fishing on borrowed faith and creates a little of his own.  This is when the artist, no matter how crude, is born. 

My father was very proud.  He probably had several dozen-dozen ant patterns in his various boxes, but I wanted to make my own fly for my own needs.  I knew he was proud because he asked me what he should do to catch the biggest fish.  He trusted me and my fly to catch the most fish, and as the second part of the team he made it his task to catch the biggest.  

This was yet another huge moment.  My dad was an expert fly fisherman.  He never knew his own father and had learned everything he knew from books, trial and error, and dumb luck.  When his adult friends would fish with us, they would always be the ones asking questions, never the reverse.  Perhaps this trait developed because there simply never was anyone he could ask for advice, or maybe it was a pig-headed trait of his.  That’s one of the hardships of being a child and losing your father; you only get to know him from that perspective.  For instance, I remember my father being much taller and bigger than I, though his last fishing license clearly states the opposite; it still surprises me that his medium sized vest is too small for my extra-large frame.  The belief is ingrained, even for something so concrete and easy to understand.  I mean height is one of the only aspects of a person which comes down to mere numbers. Was he pompous or was he the opposite shy and intimidated by “experts?”  I can’t honestly say.  The memories I have are distorted, as though seeing his reflection in the ripples of a pond.  Sometimes the waters are flat and things are easy to understand, at other times it’s like I skipped a rock over my own memories.  Nothing you see is a lie, but not all of it would prove true.

Suffice to say I never saw my father ask anyone a fishing question, until the day he asked me.   

He didn’t like the answer.

The lake had bass, had pickerel, and was rumored to hold tiger muskies.  However, to win the biggest fish portion of the contest I advised my father to take some Wheaties, get them wet, mush them into a ball around the hook, put the whole mess into his mouth to suck on it so the bait would stay on the hook better, and as a final indignity cast the loathsome bait into the darkest waters of the lake and pray for carp.

“Can’t I use this frog I tied?”  He wiggled a deer-hair frog with rubber front legs and rear legs of bucktail tied to hook shanks.  Yes, I definitely remember him complaining about the Wheaties.

As for the Derby itself, the ant fly destroyed the competition…which isn’t saying much, since it was a rainy day and most of the kids and nearly all of the parents had no interest in fishing.  My father never managed to catch a crap that day, but he did hook and land a rather cranky bullhead which was slightly larger than the largest fish I caught.  There was only two other guys fishing.  The father in the duo was using a Kastmaster spoon suspended six inches under a bobber; his kid was using a night-crawler with the bobber sitting directly on the hook.  My father ended up fishing with that kid and helping him hook and land a few bluegill (at the time I was miffed but now I understand and am proud to say I’d do the same thing in his shoes – provided we had established a comfortable lead.)  As I always did, I followed my dad’s example and let the man use my fly rod and he caught a few bluegill as well (dipping the fly in the water was all the cast he needed.) 

Did the kids finally accept me at school?  Did they carry me on their shoulders like Rudy, Lucas, or some other feeb in the stereotypical “Zero to Hero” movie moment? Of course not! See turns out that Cub Scouts are dorks, who knew?  Matty the mean kid still punched me, and I still stood there like a moron. 

Eventually, word of my cafeteria ordeal reached the ear of my father, who again asked a profound question of his own.

“Why don’t you just turn that Matty into a bloody mess and then ask everyone else if they want the same?” 

My mother and the principle didn’t like the answer.  Yet, the topic never again crossed the dining room table.