David Siskind | Sunday, 9 March 2025
I’m looking back at my casting insights. A sequence of epiphany, adopted change, undisciplined testing, concept failure and/or abandonment, and arrival at some kind of new unmapped place. And Repeat. This has been going on for a long time. I’m making progress, I think. My latest insight was that my frisbee-toss backhand worked more smoothly and more powerfully if I bent my elbow approaching my right shoulder with my casting hand. It worked nicely. However, when I re-tested my old practice of approaching my left shoulder, it worked just as well. WTF. So I abandoned thinking about mechanics and ran my drills and target practice on visualizing targets - back and front - and other external cues exclusively. Things seem to be sorting themselves out. The back target - or “bell” - is magical for me. I need to embed that habit more deeply.
This is the second week of my focused effort to train up my backhand. I’ve had to go down to the river as the fields in my local park are still fenced off for winter re-seeding. Downside - it takes me 20 minutes to get down there and 20 minutes back; Upside - there is wind. Also there are fish. So my sessions last half a day. There are two spots with ample room for longish casts. The one to the north has a large population of hefty carp near the outfall to a waste plant. I think they’re basking in the warmer water. I watched them without casting for quite a while this morning. They were definitely not feeding, just stacked up idly in the current. I couldn't help but cast to them anyway until they slid off toward the far bank. The spot further downstream also has a good population of fish, which the last two times I looked, were tipped down feeding actively in about 24” of water. I have failed to get any eats there this week and decided to let them be this morning. So I explored the river between the two, looking for feeding fish, practicing my backhands, running through my loop control drills and practicing casting into the wind which has been blowing briskly for the last few days. I didn’t see any fish but an osprey apparently did this morning, crashing into the river and struggling with something, eventually coming up empty. It must have been a carp. Nothing smaller would have justified the effort.
Tomorrow I’ll check out the southern spot early, then walk downstream a mile or so where there’s another flat that sometimes holds fish and a nearby channel where I’ve found some clooping from time to time. It’s been a bit chilly with light rains so conditions aren’t great. But today was sunny. Saturday and Sunday will be as well. The water should warm up a little and maybe more fish will show themselves. Light rains are forecast Monday. Heavier rains on Thursday. Better fish while the river lets me. I’ll do my taxes next week.
Update: I followed the plan above and walked about a mile downstream. Nada. Then turned around and walked back up. There were fish, everywhere, up on every shallow, empty shelf I had walked past on the way down. All different sizes. Some real torpedoes. They seemed to be sunning themselves. I had shots. Many were right in there. No one was interested at all. “It’s not you, it’s me.” I might suck at this. Practice felt good though.
David Siskind