Am I Too Old to Teach Fly Casting? by Joseph Meyer After teaching fly casting for several years now, I have found that the line of demarcation is about 20 years old. Younger than that and the metaphors that I use to teach fly casting are worthless. It must be a sign of my aging process, but I am mystified that those younger students who come to me for fly casting instruction just don’t have the worldliness to grasp onto the tools that I have always used to illustrate the dynamics of the cast. When I teach the false cast I want students to get into a rhythm and to become aware that when casting a shorter length of line, they need to have a quicker casting cycle than they do with a longer length of line. A simple concept, but it sometimes needs illustration to be grasped. “Be like a metronome” I advise my students, and at this admonishment I am often met with an owl-like stare. The eyes widen and then blink repeatedly, but no awareness sets in. “You know, the thing that sits on top of the piano and keeps time”. Nothing. “But you told me you took music lessons!” Blink. Blink. Nothing. When a beginner asks me about casting lessons, I tell them that it is easy to learn the basic cast. Kids pick up on it easier than adults, especially those that have had some musical training, so I always inquire about any music lessons that a prospective student may have taken. Yet the wood pyramid with the brass pendulum that graced the piano that every student plunked away at is a foreign concept to younger casting students. “Well, if you don’t know what a metronome is how did you keep time?” They reply that the device used during their lessons was di-gi-tal. Everything that comes out of a teenager’s mouth is said with that odd accent. Everything is di-gi-tal. It’s the new millennium. So, we press on. I need to illustrate that they need to come to a more definitive stop on their forward cast and I ask that they pretend that they are swinging a hammer. The scenario is this: they need to drive a nail into a wall to hang a picture. The Big, Old, Brunette at home always wants pictures hung at eye level so I borrow her advice and tell them that they need to drive the nail into the wall at eye level. Further, they need to swing a hammer big enough to drive the nail in with one stroke. This illustrates that they need to break their wrist at the very last second to apply power at the end of the stroke and come to a complete stop. If they don’t break their wrist ever so slightly, they will be pushing the nail into the wall instead of driving it in. I want to remind them that when they are swinging a hammer, they normally do not hold it with a death grip but just tightly enough to keep control. It’s the same way with a fly rod. This analogy works for me and has worked with every student that I have ever had that was older than twenty. I was slack-jawed speechless when a casting student told me that neither she nor her brother had ever held a hammer. “Never?” No, was her reply; they always had a workman do that kind of thing. I am blessed to own a fly shop in a Chicago suburb that is surrounded by nothing but economy. This brings beginner fly fishers into the shop and is an economic boon to me. The downside is that the younger students that I teach come from homes where things are done for them; they have people to do that. She told me not to yell at her, it’s not like her family had a ranch and she had to string barbed wire fences all day. She and her brother lived in Moneyville, for gosh sakes. This was coming from a teenager who drove up to her casting lesson behind the wheel of a Range Rover with a brush bar on the front. Now it’s my turn to offer up the Owl Look. “Never, ever swung a hammer, have you Punkin?” Pity. Another common casting error that beginners (as well as an old fishing partner) make is to reach back for more power. When executing the back cast, they tend to reach back for it as if they were making a softball throw, thereby lengthening their casting arc and losing power instead of gaining power. It typically happens when casting for distance or casting into the wind. The correct technique is to come to a more complete stop on the back cast, let the line unfurl behind you and then apply more power to a complete stop on the forward cast. Left Kreh describes this as an acceleration to a stop. The description works in theory but needs illustration, and the next casting student was a young buck of about 19. I took the student’s fly rod away from him, laid it on the ground and told him that the fly rod on the ground is now the line on the saloon floor and that he would need to step up to the line to throw a dart. I told him that instead of a fly rod he now has a “pretend” dart in his hand, and I asked him to throw the dart at an imaginary dartboard. The next teaching step was to move the imaginary dartboard farther across the saloon floor so that when he made his next dart throw, he wouldn’t reach back for more power, he needed to come to a harder stop to get the dart to fly farther. The first time I used this analogy, I damn near broke my casting arm by patting myself on the back is self-congratulation; I was a genius in getting a point across. From the nineteen-year old I got that Owl Look again, blink, blink. Not only had he never thrown darts before but he was truly confused about the concept of a saloon. Here came the accent again. “A saloon, is that, um, like a bar?” “No, dude, a saloon is not, um, like a bar, it is precisely a bar! It’s a comforting place where aging, harried fly fishers go to apply liquid salve to bruised egos after trout have made fools of them. As part of our therapy, sometimes we throw darts. You should try it sometime, it helps your casting stroke.” Sometimes I think I am getting too old for this. Hatches Magazine Subscription Price: $6.95 for each issue The Premiere issue is ready for shipping & the Fall 2008 issue will be available September 1st. Hatches Magazine Subscription Price: $6.95 for each issue The Premiere issue is ready for shipping & the Fall 2008 issue will be available September 1st.