
Many people
will tell you that the back cast is the most
important part of casting. There is a little
rule somewhere that "you can't have a
good forward cast unless you get a good
backcast", which although not strictly
true, it is the case that it sure helps
your forward cast to have a good backcast.
Certainly if you have a low back cast and then come over the top with the forward cast, then you are either going to throw a high forward
cast or an open loop.
The first
faults a beginner usually has with a
pick-and-lay-down cast are usually in the
backcast. The faults are this:
Taking
the rod too far backwards
Failure
to stop the rod - which is really the
same as the first point
Failure
to get an effective lift - either by
completely forgetting the lift
element of the cast and throwing a large
open loop, or worse; a low,
face-level cast flying directly at
the caster, with alarming pace (this is caused by the rod bending against the surface tension on the line, and
then unbending as soon as the line is free - duck!), or by remembering the lift but starting
with the rod near the horizontal and
ending up clearing the line from the water too far backwards, so that
by the time the backcast has been
completed, the line has travelled over
and down and not up and back.
When teaching
(or even when practising myself), I imagine
casting straight up into the sky. If you try
to cast the line vertically upwards, you
generally get a great backcast. Its a mental
thing.
Remember that
for the backcast the stroke should be small -
we are merely flicking the tip of the rod.
Ten yards, maybe a little more is all we are
trying to aerialise. Initially. Later when we
get involved in overhangs and rear back
shoots then we can relax this rule.
I purposely move the hand upwards into the stop, with a little twist of the wrist. This gives me
a narrow loop. It's a little upwards corkscrew movement.
Positive stop.
Positive stop. Positive stop.
With a really
great loop on the backcast - even with a
drift - you can often end up with the very
end of the line dipping downwards after the loop has straightened, its very
much like forward casting with an attempt to
get the fly to land first (tuck cast). And it can be a
real pain in the arse. There are several ways to
counteract this:
You
could try shooting some line into the
back cast - something we will deal
with separately.
You
could force the loop to travel under
the rod on the backcast so that when
it straightens the line pops up and
not down (this is a really smart
trick incidentally and is great for casting over low bushes or when using a heavy lure).
You
could bring the loop around the side
of the rod on the backcast (a la
Belgian Cast)
Some casters
watch every single back cast, to see when it
has fully straightened. Often a recommended
viewing position is the open stance. Some
casters hardly ever watch their backcast.
Frankly unless watching the back loop, brings
in some fault of its own - such as a body twist resulting in a curved track of the rod tip - I can see nothing
wrong with watching them (in fact it can help!). This said, however,
there are times - specifically in fishing
situations when you really don't want to
take time out to watch your backcast, in
these circumstances 'feeling' for the line
with the rear drift really comes in handy
(and it helps to have practised it before
encountering Mr Lunker).
Feeling for the line straightening should, however, be a sixth sense and not a literal pull
on the rod tip. Having the line bounce against your rod tip is not a good position with which to be starting the forward cast.
The forward
cast can actually tell us what happened
behind us. There are two things to look out
for: the first is a complete heap at your
feet - generally just preceded by an almighty
'crack' this is failure for the backcast to
straighten out (not long enough pause) and
the second is for the line to land in a
wriggle as opposed to perfectly straight and
is caused by a low backcast (when I get this I call it a presentation cast BTW! - see puddle cast).