David Siskind | Sunday, 6 July 2025
Paul just posted his Launch Drill addressing a problem that I have struggled with for a while. That is the transition from a strong 170 backcast to the forward stroke. An assumption implicit in this exercise is that a forward cast is best initiated from a completely unrolled backcast. Paul teaches ringing the bell and a diminution of felt tension as good signals to start forward. It works for me.
And just this week I received the latest issue of Fly Fisherman in which Ed Jaworowski suggests starting a forward cast before rollout to maintain tension in the line. He, and others, say that the line loses energy when it straightens out and as tension disappears, slack is created. Then this slack that has to be taken up, wasting a portion of the forward stroke. As evidence he points to the clunk at the end of rollout when casting a clouser.
I see it a little differently from Mr. Jaworowski. I believe that tension varies as the loop rolls out, finally diminishing as the line finally straightens. The clunk at the end of a clouser-cast results from a trajectory largely independent but coordinated with that of the line. The slack forms when the clouser bounces. So this is a special case not indicative of the timing required for more balanced flies (see Sadotti et al.). In any case during the backcast the fly is moving back, it necessarily is at zero velocity just as it changes direction (velocity is a vector) as the forward cast is initiated. On a well timed smooth, sexy backcast there is some tension even as the line is falling after rollout. I’m finding that reducing power a little, minimizes rebound and keeps everything sexy. And that for me Ed’s approach, applied generally, leads to tails.
Yesterday was July 4. There were some nods to tradition but somehow the celebration seemed listless and joyless. Maybe it’s just me, but my evening was less marked by the booming of local fireworks than the late night plumbing disaster of my downstairs neighbor. We're heading into the 250th year of the great American experiment and it seems to have run its course. Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill into law and codified the priorities of what looks like and feels like an authoritarian United States of America.
The culture wars, the fumbling on-again-off-again tariffs and hyperbolic self-aggrandizing, all seem damaging but could yield to correction to the degree possible in a declining empire, but the cruel deportation sweeps and unreviewable detentions signal the end of law. This crowd’s glee over the opening of the new Alligator-Alcatraz is vile. The OBBB will enable ICE to hire 10,000 agents to flood our streets but few immigration judges. There is no intent to process the detained, only to keep them in cruel camps indefinitely. The largest police force in the United States will now be a secret police force - masked, badgeless, warrantless, and unaccountable. Trump and crew are already advocating denaturalization, arrest of political enemies, and media critics. SCOTUS is complicit. Whatever there was here is over. We can all work toward something new but it looks difficult and complicated. Depressing.
David Siskind