David Siskind | Sunday, 22 March 2026
I posit that there are two kinds of fisherman - good athletes and not-so-good athletes - I am a proud member of the second cohort. My greatest athletic flaws come from excessive and varying, narrow, focus and over-thinking. I’ll characterize my lack of fast-twitch muscle, smallish stature, and lack of physical bravery as secondary flaws. My guess is that good athletes come upon the grace that comes with the right gaze early and apply it widely, learning quickly. Great athletes add the ingredients of physical strength, speed, size and grit.
Last week I wrote that “I need to practice what was close to working on the water. Mostly more effective hauls. And the right gaze for longer backhand casts.” So I have. This business around the right gaze and heightened peripheral seeing has got me by the shorts. I worked with this on the grass. I made sure I was always looking at the target with as wide a window as I could manage rather than a sharp focus. I made sure to check out what I was seeing in the periphery especially all the way through the cast and during the retrieve of the fly.
Starting backwards and looking first at the retrieve - I found that I didn't necessarily see the orange yarn immediately at 60-70 feet. Sometimes I’d just have to keep a wide seeing window open and wait until it showed. This leads me to posit that first, I should trust the gaze (more on my training later) and second, to have patience. What I’m seeing may not meet expectations but will in the end change those expectations.
The same worked for closed and open stance casting. I waited to haul, punch or rotate for the rod to show up tilted toward the target at the edge of my target-focused window. Loops improved, tails almost disappeared. The fearful feeling that I was loaded but nowhere to accelerate, nowhere to haul, that I had run out of room became less urgent. My theory is that if I trust my peripheral seeing it and use it a frame of reference will be established encouraging a more graceful smoother see-cast-retireve sequence (corollary, supported to some extent in the literature - see Wulf’s survey article).
I also re-read the chapter in Gray”s “Learning to Optimize Movement” on “seeing.” Much of his discussion explains how the right gaze, and perception of position and targets, naturally improves learning and performance optimization. An example is focusing on the tangent to a curve when driving virtually pulls the car through the proper path. Perceiving angular displacements makes running to catch a ball intuitive. But all of these foci require context and a wide window. Not everything included is clearly seen as it’s not in the center of the vision field. Whether we are aware of it or not we depend on information on the edges of the field. I’ve read about some drills and have invented my own to encourage acceptance of what I see there. For example as I walk down a side walk I note to myself the colors of objects as they pass out of my vision field. I try to maintain awareness of all these objects as simultaneously as I can. What I tell myself is that the “Quiet Eye” (see Joan Vickers) will improve proprioception and graceful coordination of movement. Applying this to Paul’s external cue of vertical rod position to trigger or allow application of power and begin the haul, I learned to see the rod position with my rods rather than my cones. The results of this experiment are better for me than trying to train muscle memory and allowing my detailed attentions to dart around randomly. I feel that the darting eye, as opposed to a quiet eye, is typical of every learning and performance obstacle I’ve ever faced - not to put too much pressure on this latest epiphany.
So here’s my unified field instruction. Relax. See widely. Don’t get obsessed with detail. Trust your peripheral vision and proprioception. Work to REALIZE (through experimentation) workable EF (external focus or cues). This will help
- Find fish
- Cast to fish
- Converse with fish
Making More Sense of Drag and Drop
I found a description of the drag and drop presentation that seemed like it would address the problems I’ve had making it work. The video suggests leaders of 18-20 feet. Cast so that the center of the leader lands over the fish’s position while both the flyline and the fly, each, land 9-10 feet away. When the fly lands, lift the rod sliding the fly over to the fish. Then drop the fly on to its dinner plate. I’d always seen shorter leaders recommended. You’d think I’d have come to this earlier. I was creeping toward that solution but wasn’t there yet. I tied up a 20 footer and practiced with weighted and unweighted flies on the grass. I can’t wait to see what the fish think.
Cheers,
David Siskind