Paul Arden | Tuesday, 7 October 2025
One of the most interesting aspects of flycasting coaching is experimenting. A long time ago I realised it was easier to make stroke changes in a different stroke. There is obviously some science behind this and it’s easier to make a big change than a small one. It’s easier to work on a similar part of a pattern in another stroke that isn’t cemented. For the same reason that taking a strategic break from training a certain discipline, can often allow new summits to be reached once the training resumes.
So recently I’ve been coaching stepping on a distance delivery. Not that you are going to do this when fishing on a boat, but as a method of working on the delivery stroke/launch as a separate entity. Over the past month I’ve shown this to about 7 or 8 students. Mostly high level, not just championship level. But some only pushing the doors at 100’ (which is still respectably decent of course) to see what happens.
The feedback has been very interesting. What is perhaps more interesting is how most of these students immediately throw further. That was unexpected. Normally when you introduce a change, the performance is lower. But in this case it’s not and in fact it’s either the same or higher.
But the real benefit of this IMO is the “exploration”. The students are testing new ground and exploring new things that they have never tried before. The WhatsApp messages between lessons have been both intriguing and inspiring.
And tomorrow (well today actually), I get the first insight into what has been 3 weeks of experimenting by one of my top athletes. In this athlete’s case, we have a huge window before the next competition, so we can do this. 4 months out from competition we certainly can’t do this! But we have about 4-5 months to explore ahead of us before we really need to be dialling in which stroke they will take to the WCs. In this particular case I’d like for us to be dialled down by February or March latest.
Very excited to hear today’s athlete report!!
The fishing here is good right now. Of course I’m completing my Ironman preparations and so haven’t been fishing quite as much as I should. Today I plan a long swim and to investigate a series of often-productive bays. It’s one of my usual morning fishing locations that I used to guide regularly but haven’t fished since very early in the year. Possibly the last time I fished it was when Graeme was here in January (it’s a large lake!).
I’m checking this out because I have a returning guest in ten days, Richard, and I need to decide whether we start here or a completely different part of the lake. I’m looking forward to seeing Richard again.
I’ll be on my Ironman taper by then so it fits nicely. I’ll just have to daily swim and ride some intense short 30 minute sessions so my body doesn’t freeze up or go into shock by not training!
I plan to have all meals ready in advance. It will be a cooking fiesta. Cooking one two-day meal can see me drink 1/2 bottle of wine. Three two-day meals in one cooking session? I hope I don’t fall out the boat!
Busy busy.
Have a great week!
Cheers, Paul