Paul Arden | Tuesday, 14 March 2023
I’m editing a Zoom conversation I had with Bernt Johansson but I’m also proof-reading my wife’s final MBA paper. That should be finished tonight. Yay! So in the meantime, I’m linking a video I uploaded over the weekend on Roll Casting Drills, which is also how I introduce both Stopless and Pull-back on my Zoom courses.
Pull-back can be quite difficult to teach, so if you are trying to learn it you might be struggling. Usually the best way is to take the rod without the line and bounce it gently in your hand. It goes boing… boing. Emphasise the boing, but not too much! It is a subtle movement. It is not a double movement. And there you go; that’s pull-back :)))
You could try imagining you have a drumstick and you need to gently tap a symbol. Allow the hand to bounce back naturally. Use flexion/extension of the hand ie palm-forwards grip… anyway this is not a lesson in teaching pull-back. I don’t know how I got sidetracked into that!!
Early starts for me this week. Ten of my current Zoom students are in North America, dotted around, and they’ve just gone into summer time! This is good news and means I won’t be teaching so much at night. I enjoyed the cool evenings but the night time wasps were challenging. One very memorable lesson for me, Rob, must have seen 40 wasps in the boat. But now, this week, instead of teaching a 9, 10 or sometimes 11 o’clock at night, I’ll be teaching at… wait for it… 6.30am!!! At least there won’t be any bloody wasps around. And dawn here can be beautiful.
I’ve been looking forward to this change and I’ll go fishing afterwards. It’s a really great time of year right now. Last month is always a bit hit and miss on the lake, so I concentrated mostly on Zoom lessons, Ashly’s MBA and really working on my Zone 2 training for the Ironman. Learning to run Zone 2 here in the tropics I found to be incredibly challenging, but I’ve figured it out now and hopefully, by doing more of it, I’ll get smoother and faster. At least I feel that I can now actually finish an Ironman here.
Have a great week!
Cheers, Paul