Mika Lappalainen | Friday, 22 January 2021
This week I have continue my building project. It has been quite chilly, -15 celsius around. We need to have ”shelter” for rubbish bins at the farm. But why just built shelter just for them, so I make it 2 part shelter and in other end we can keep snowmobiles and quads depending about season. Building something in winter is not easy, at least for me. You need to have lot of clothes and protect your hands more than in warm weather. You can have frost bites just touching your tools etc. And no, I’m not meaning that tool even it can disappear when it is really cold weather.
Anyway while building I have been sitting down now and then. Sometimes just to watch how I am doing but mostly to think about how to continue and make shelter good enough to hold snow etc. I have clear image how shelter will look like when it is ready. (Might be difficult to make so good one but still working on it)
Today after 10 hours outside, feeding reindeer and building shelter, I start to think about fly casting. Casting is same like building something long lasting. When you start learning and casting, you have clear image how casting should be. You have seen someone casting and have idea how it should go. Everything starts from foundation. In buildings it is clear but when it comes to casting, you might want to skip something.
If you skip foundation in casting it will be same like with buildings, you are fixing something long time to get it right and last. I have learned casting by myself, no teacher, just books and some videos. I didn’t skip foundation in my casting. I worked hard to get it somewhere and try to learn from mistakes, comparing how it was in videos and books. It was hard work but eventually it paid off.
Now when I’m teaching casting to beginners I have been divided casting in small parts. Starting with just hand, then adding rod, then some line out, how to use your other hand to control line etc. Some of the tips I found from Jason Borger’s modular approach. I got some new ideas about building foundation and how to train some spesific parts.
Casting is just like building something. Make good foundation and it is easy to built more around that. There are no short cuts, at least if you want things to be like you imagine. With fly casting you can always return back to basis and train more. I have notice that I do that sometimes, doing casting move even I don’t have rod in my hand. Maybe it is because of long winter so I remind my muscles about move or maybe just because I can.
Have a nice weekend and stay healthy
Mika from Finland
