Paul Arden | Sunday, 27 February 2022
War tends to put a perspective on things. I don’t know what to write about that so I won’t but I’m sure like everyone else in Europe it’s weighing heavily on my mind. As some of you will know, Lars and I made a very good friend in Ukraine when we were testing for the FFI out there. A very smart young lady, and we managed to give her some work organising videos and so on for Sexyloops. She is well, but she is in Kiev and this is course rather worrying.
Me, I’m up and about. Managed to take a Covid test last week and tested positive. Just for the record I am double vaccinated and was waiting to be called up for my booster shot. I guess that’s not important now!! Anyway I’m good, still a bit tired but feeling more and more invincible again every day, giving Zoom Casting courses and selling a bunch of rods this week too!
Here in the Malaysian Dry Season it’s damned wet!!! Normally at this time of year it doesn’t rain at all and everywhere is a fire hazard. I have a friend who is a fire hazard too and when you put the two of them together you get some spectacular results. The lake has come up two maybe three feet in the last week. I haven’t seen this occur at this time of year before. And it’s cold! I mean relatively. Right now it’s 28C. That’s cold! Brrr.
So there is a casting drill of which I am rather fond. It’s a max carry drill. On Sexyloops we measure line carry as being the amount of flyline being held measured to the line hand, excluding leader. There are lots of reasons for doing it this way that I won’t go into, but if for example you were carrying a 90’ DT line, false casting, while holding the backing knot in your line hand, then you would be carrying 90’.
If you know the length of your line (and you need to measure this by the way, because they are rarely if ever bang on as written on the box) and assuming you have a long carry, then it’s very easy to strip measure from your carry point to the backing knot to work out your carry. Not that I did that for this test because I was using a 120’ line. So I used a tape measure with two pegs ten feet apart so I could wrap the line in 20’ loops and measure accurately.
This test that I’m going to describe to you, I think is an excellent one. It is max carry exercise using difference stances and techniques. I didn’t take it to failure. I took the increased carry lengths to an uncomfortable point, by which I mean I can keep the loops aloft for 30s or more but I’m struggling. Two more feet would definitely cause problems.
You can do it for any technique. The four techniques I used was 1. Closed stance accuracy with weight on the front foot (no weight shift), like throwing a dart. 2. Closed stance accuracy with weight on rear foot (no weight shift). 3. Open Stance Distance (weight shift). 5. 170/Stopless.
I ran with each technique a few times to make sure I was measuring the appropriate mark using the MED5 and HT Instructor 6. The results were-
67’ carry closed stance weight front foot.
75’6 carry closed stance weight back foot
86’ open stance distance
93’6 170.
Those are not 2 or 3 false cast numbers. Those numbers would be higher. These lengths can be held for 20 or 30 false casts but as I say it’s “uncomfortable”. Pull back two feet on all of them and it’s comfortable, firing and all good things.
If you are keen to push your casting forward, I would recommend this drill. Taking each stroke to the max carry helps optimise the respective technique. The great thing about Carry measuring is that it’s much less conditions affected. Throwing distance down the tape can have differing results of 30’ just because of conditions. But those carry numbers are less-affected.
Where the numbers are affected, and it makes the measurements interesting, is altitude. In Calgary for example (1000m above sea-level) I’ve carried 105’ of MED. However the MED doesn’t like too much running line in the top leg of the loop. My DT Lumiline is 97’ (3’ less than on the box!) and this for me is easy to carry to the backing knot, far easier than the 93’6 of MED5 I measured in the recent test.
Still it’s a very good game that you can play. And, as you improve your techniques, you can compare numbers over time. I wrote recently on the Board that if Distance Casting was a cake then Carry would be the cake itself and the Launch would be the icing on the top. And as you will know, if you’ve ever baked a cake, the icing always goes on last.
I’ve just started distance training again. Hopefully getting to the World Championships is possible this year. Today I received a bunch of MED5s as well as some new Bonefish lines from SA. I’m looking forward to really tuning up my distance casting in time for August and will try to put in a strong performance this year. That means that the work needs to be done now. The way I do this, is I work on carry. I won’t even make a Launch for a month… Just tune in that 90’ carry and make it sing. Baking the cake.
If you experiment with this, have fun with it. It’s one of my favourite casting drills.
Cheers, Paul