Following on from many discussions on the board regarding Ian Walker's shooting head cast and in particular the Straight Line Path (SLP) of the rod tip, I'm now uploading another video of Ian's casting and this time it's with the weight forward. It's good for the purposes of comparison.
I'm not going to delve too deeply into this (not now anyway) but there is certainly some interesting stuff to be gleaned from Ian's technique and needless to say the SLP of the rod tip. But, before we dig deeper, I'd like to point out that many people have criticised Ian Walker for his choice in shorts. I think this is completely unfair. Ian is a distance caster and a very good one - he can't be expected to be good at everything he does. We are not here to judge him or his shortcomings in taste and I know many other anglers - also good casters, although perhaps not *as* good - who have little or no dress sense as well, and so I urge you all not to be too distracted by this.
Notice several things about his cast, firstly this is a stiff rod and I *think* a fairly heavy outfit. Note well the excellent tracking - this gives perfect alignment of the loop. This coupled with an excellent haul (it's fast and timed right at the end) is very important. He finishes the stroke with a real explosive punch and still manages to keep everything under control - he doesn't fall in for example - many people would.
My cast differs from Ian's in several ways: I drift more and I slip more (although if you watch Ian's wrist the last cast in particular has an excellent slip). I also lead more with the elbow during the slip and pull more vertically than horizontally for shorter casts. However for out-and-out distance I'm changing my stroke - and very much due to Ian's influence on the board I might add :-))
The loops on this video are not particularly narrow - in distance casting tight loops aren't everything - but they are well formed and the top leg is straight and the point is well defined. One other thing that is striking (when you slow it down) is the flapping of the end of the flyline throughout the cast - a fly on the leader would stop this occurring.
I'm hoping that this excellent video contributes to this discussion on the board :-))
