How do you get to Carnegie hall?

[TimRobinsin]

Practice my friends.

After getting my a$$ handed to me at the last PA casting comp and only taking 3rd in the Catskills meet I have been using much of my free time to practice my technique. I have my CI performance exam coming up soon and I need to be on top of my game.

I know it's nerdy but if you approach casting practice with the Tai Chi mindset it becomes not only therapeutic but rewarding and a lot of fun.

Now one thing you want to do is make sure you're not practicing bad habits. this video does a great job giving you some tips for practicing. I helped with the next episode and I am looking forward to producing more with these guys. take a look and let me know what you think.

I hope it helps you as much as it helps me and the folks I help.

 

[poopdeck]

I told my kids a thousand times that champions are made at practice not on game day. As for myself, I don't take myself so serious when fishing and prefer practicing and fishing at the same time. Practifishing if you will.

 

[joebamboo]

I have come to realize that the fish could care less about my casting technique!

 

[OldLefty]

There's no question that practice is essential to "moving up" in the casting world. Another essential is support (and a bit of promotion) from fellow "performers." That is, if you are in fairly close proximity to others of like pursuit. Some of us are not that blessed with having others of like pursuit in such close proximity.

If one finds one's self more of a loner this is where casting fault analysis becomes paramount. Executing a cast and then performing self-analysis can be grueling; it can also pay tremendous dividends, albeit hard earned.

It's not so much that practice makes perfect, it's that perfect practice makes perfect. It's a matter of doing the right thing...over and over and over.

 

[DanL]

Joebamboo, your casting on Penns Creek at the spring jam looked pretty dang good, so I think you'll be fine!

 

[rrt]

Tim,
As a self-taught caster, I am impressed that you could take a 3rd in a competition. I have done what Lefty says is bad: I have learned to cast badly over more than 45 years of fishing, and my casting is filled with bad habits. I have done the wrong things over and over. When I learned, the books said to cast as though you had a book between your upper arm and torso. That doesn't work too well with long casts, though that is my habit.

Despite this, I can cast well enough to catch trout regularly, which should be encouraging for other fishermen who are not great casters.

Best wishes to you for success in your competitions.

 

[FarmerDave]

Don't kid yourself by saying the fish don't care. Take the last steelhead jam. No fewer than 4 steelhead disproved of my technique. A couple of them even made off with my offering, and one disliked my technique so much he tried to make off with all my line.

To each their own., but I'm self taught, so I know I am doing it right.

 

[RLeep2]

Like Rich and Dave, I'm self taught. Its been working out OK for me for the past half century, or at the least, I've been blissfully ignorant enough to believe my casting doesn't need fixed. I suspect that had I received casting instructions at some point along the way, it would have ruined me as a caster. But that's just me. Taking a class on how to build a birdhouse would be of virtually no value to me, but give me a saw, some wood and a drill and then go away and leave me alone. When you come back, I'll have made you a birdhouse.

Everything I do as a fly caster probably has a proper name in the holy writ of the art; reach cast, steeple cast, bow and arrow cast, double haul, whatever. But I don't care what these names are. They are superfluous information to me. When I taught myself each of these things, I did not learn them as a thing or technique with a name. My sole motivation was that I had to figure out a way to get my fly under that hemlock bough or clear the h... over there by that stump on the far bank so I could catch a fish. Or whatever the presenting situation happened to be at the time. Which is why I think it important to realize that fishing and casting are not the same thing. Or put another way, I guess the only way that I would ever win a casting competition is if you kept the competition part of it a secret from me and just draw an "X" on the ground and tell me to cast a fly onto it.

Oh, and you have to go away while I'm doing it. Did I mention that...?

 

[FarmerDave]

Yea, but you and Rich are old. :lol:

 

[RLeep2]

Rich Arnold? I haven't seen him since High School..

What does he have to do with any of this?

You kids get the he-- off my lawn, I'm trying to practice my casting..

On a more serious note (or at least as serious as I can muster on short notice) I join Rich (rrt, not Arnold..) in congratulating anyone with the discipline and drive to become a fine caster, the right way.

 

[FarmerDave]

I'm withholding comment on the right way because I don't know what the right way, is.

Anyway, your birdhouse analogy struck a cord.

A couple years ago I traded a couple logs for a handful of bird houses. True story. I gave him some logs, and he asked what I wanted and I told him.

And you could see they got progressively better with each one.

The first couple weren't all that great, but the birds don't seem to mind.;-)

His name wasn't Bob though.

 

[Chaz]

There are times when I don't cast so well, usually associated with time on the water, or more importantly time between outings. I'f I'm fishing a lot, then I usually am casting well. But like my guitar instructor says, perfect practice makes perfect. Learn what bad habits are and correct them. then once corrected don't ever practice bad habits again.

 

[mattwolf]

The fish don't care about casting techniques, but the dang trees do!!!