Tracy&James | Sunday, 7 January 2024
I had my first casting session of the year yesterday, though it was cut a little short by a downpour of rain that had me hastily grabbing my gear and running back to the house before I got too soaked. We're having a lot of rain in North Wales at the moment (but not as much as in other parts of the UK that are experiencing flooding) thus the prospects for getting out on the river for some grayling fishing are looking pretty bleak. The Dee has a number of depth gauges that provide live(ish) data to the river levels website, so it doesn't require a wasted drive to know that the water is very high and the colour of a Starbucks latte. At this time of year the land surrounding the river is pretty much saturated with water, thus any rainfall has an instant impact on the level. As such, fishable days can be few and far between, and I have to hope they fall on days when I'm available to get out. By contrast, getting out for some casting practice is easy for me – from my home office (which is more of a tackle room according to Tracy) I look out on one of my casting areas, and I just need to grab the 9ft #5 weight that's left by the front door and walk 20 metres and cast away. Firing my loops under the low wooden fence, back into the road, is a favourite practice drill of mine – if I can see the fluff has reached the middle of the road then I know I've nailed it. Actually this is quite a tough cast as the gap I'm shooting at is probably only 50cm high and underneath it is some tufty grass, that the mower doesn't get to, that all to easily catches the leader on the way through.
One of my main focus areas for my distance casting this year will be to see if I can change my forward cast stroke. To be honest, this has been a focus for many years now, but I just can't seem to implement the changes I want to. It's quite frustrating because when pantomime casting my forward cast is awesome – I can outcast Bernt Johansson and Mike Duzynski in my kitchen when holding a wooden spoon! However, as soon as I get a rod and line in my hand the movements I see (on video) are nothing like what I've been practising.
I've started to think about why this should be, i.e. why I move a certain way holding a spoon versus something very different, and unintentional, whilst holding a rod and line. I came to the conclusion that the main difference is the feeling of leverage. Perhaps this was causing me to change how I move or the order in which I engage various muscles and joints. To investigate this I decided to try and lessen the leverage whilst still casting a rod and line – I did this simply by using the bottom half of the rod only. I would have used the bottom section only (of a four piece rod) but none of the ones I own have a guide on this section, so hauling would then become a problem. Discarding the top two sections of the rod had an immediate effect and my movements were now much more aligned with what I wanted them to look like. Once I've got a few more hours under my belt with this technique I'll add in the third section of the rod and see if that causes a set-back or not. Incidentally, anyone who has cast with a 'broomstick' arrangement will know about the loops I'm getting using a half rod that obviously doesn't bend to my input – super sharp with not a sign of a wrinkle in the rod leg.
I hope your week is equally wrinkle free.
James