The Wrist In The Cast

"tmon" wrote in message
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SNIP
Hi Mike, thanks for the link and excellent advice. It seems that many
of the experts have differing opinions regarding the use of the wrist in
even the basic "pick up and lay down". Joan Wulff is a notable example.
She teaches loading move, power snap of the wrist and then drift to 12
o'clock on the back cast. Then loading move, power snap of the wrist
and then drift to the target on the forward cast.

My pleasure. The link was of course concerned with distance casting a #5
wt, not learning to cast.

Indeed, opinions do differ. Unfortunately, irrespective of the particular
opinion involved, as I have discovered over many years of practice, it is
not always ( or not eben usually!), a good idea for a beginner to try doing
what an expert does. At least not at first. This often causes massive
problems. I have a lot of literature on casting, loads of videos, etc etc,
and I spend a lot of time doing it, teaching others to do it, watching
others do it, and discussing it with experts.

At one time, I rather hoped that it would be possible to design a
"universal" casting course for beginners, but it has proved impossible, as
in many cases one is unable to reach even a satisfactory concensus on the
definitions of various terms. Some of the books etc available, are so
complex and comprehensive that they are more or less useless to beginners.
There is no way for a beginner to know how to implement what he is reading.
Most don´t want to go to such lengths in any case. Certainly not at first.

Nevertheless, I don´t know of anybody who advises allowing the wrist to
"break". This is mainly a beginners fault, and nothing else. "Using" the
wrist correctly is only possible when you can already cast. This is also not
a lot of use to beginners, as they have no idea when to do what. They
basically have no "feel" for what is going on, and are not even capable of
the simplest cast without having problems. Introducing wrist usage, and
other things at this stage, is in my opinion merely unecessarily confusing.

Possibly, Mrs Wulff and others, can teach people their methods of "using"
the wrist "hands on", and in person, but most beginners have severe problems
when trying to do this by reading text, watching videos etc.

I can teach any rank beginner to cast at least 40 feet in less than a hour,
without using the wrist, or allowing it to break. With people who have
already tried to learn by themselves, this is often much more difficult.
They can not cast properly to start with, but want to cast further anyway!
Trying to remove the faults they have acquired is far more difficult than
teaching someone from scratch.

Some never will cast 90 feet, not even 60. Mainly because they have never
learned the basic principles properly.

Discussion and argument, on this or any other forum, about wrist usage or
indeed other aspects of casting, are more or less useless for beginners as
well. Other people ( who no longer consider themselves beginners, often
merely because they have been fishing for a while! ) wont listen to what
one says in any case, as they are convinced that they know it all. People
also take things extremely personally, and before one knows quite how it
happened, one is the butt of all sorts of insults and nonsense.

Lastly, to become a really first class caster, one needs to know not only
what to and when to do it, but also why, as otherwise it normally just will
not work. There are exceptions to this, and I have known a couple, but they
are few and far between.

TL
MC