Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 3 August 2016
In the past 25 years I have come across many fly casting instructors. Some of the truly well-respected ones told me to teach the best fly casting style of all styles. Roman Moser favored the Gebetsroither style. Göran Andersson tought the Underhand style. Hans Ruedi Hebeisen explained the Hebeisen style to be most effective. And then there was Charles Jardine demonstrating all these and many more styles in an excellent way of summarizing that there is no best style in general.
I have been teaching fly casting to many students. All students were different in their abilty to move their hands, arms, body, legs and feet. In the end I wanted them all to learn how to control the key points of fly casting.
- smoothly accelerate the rod
- position the rotation at the right time
- keep proper timing
- adjust the arc to the desired line speed and trajectory
- keep the rod in plane
- keep proper line tension
Just last weekend I had one student having both shoulders injured and being unable to move his hands behind the shoulder as many others can. Another student was limitated due to sitting in a wheelchair. For both students we worked out the best way how to use their abilties to move the rod in order to control all key points above.
For me it's pretty clear that there is no best fly casting style and will never be. Every style comes with pros and cons. We have many different fishing situations and many different lines and rods making one or another style being a proper choice.
I recommend to learn to control the key points of fly casting and to try out different ways how to do this. In the end you may find the best style - YOUR own style - matching your abilities best.
Besides that there is one fair advantage when concentrating on one and one only fly casting style when teaching beginners. It offers those spending only some days per year fly fishing a tight way of matching proper fly casting instead of having to understand (and try) more than just this one way. It's this why such limitated way of teaching fly casting will be successful to some degree, too. Still I prefer to match each students abilties - especially when being injured.
Back into fishing right now. ;)
Great week to all of you!
All my best
Bernd
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