Paul Arden | Sunday, 14 July 2024
Another highly exciting FP from me today. I’m in the middle of moving the boat, following a bee invasion. I’ve mentioned this before but bees love socks. If you don’t want bees in your boat then I would suggest leaving your socks at home. Why bees love socks I can only guess. Normally these invasions only occur in the Dry Season, February and March appear to be their favourite month for socks, so I was quite surprised to experience a fully coordinated invasion today… July I think it is.
So I’m going to moor up near Ant Island. I won’t be going ashore however. Only Mika would do something crazy like that. Yesterday was my 5hr indoor bike ride, and I’m a little bit shot today. I have a lesson at 4pm, afterwards I need to do some funky roof top casting to answer a casting question from Walter, and another question from Gary. And also I’m hoping to find some free-risers.
I have early morning lessons this week, which means a 7am start. It’s good though because I can fish afterwards and the fishing is picking up now I believe. On Wednesday I have a fight planned with a dentist, and a 2.5hr evening run. Life is good!!
So what can I talk about today? Well something that regularly comes up is that someone has a casting problem — it can be tailing loops for example — and they ask how to fix them.
As instructors we understand what causes them, and how to fix them. And if we are doing this online it’s a bit of a detective story. But I often see students and sometimes instructors jumping to conclusions that it’s automatically a problem with the Casting Stroke. Now while it most certainly can be a problem here, the very first thing we need to do is ask about tackle.
One cause of many casting problems, not just tails, is an inappropriate leader. Imagine for example an AFFTA8 line (perhaps incorrectly labelled as being a 6WT line) and attached to the end is 10 feet of 4lbs line. Crazy you might say, but also far more common than you might think.
Here is what happens in this situation; the flyline unrolls to the rod tip and all of a sudden it reaches thin monofilament. The remaining energy has to go somewhere and instead of being smoothly dissipated through the tapered leader, it kicks back up the flyline. Apart from creating some funky presentation casts, this also makes falsecasting extremely difficult and is a major cause of problems.
Consequently almost all casting related problems should first start out with a discussion over what it is that is being cast.
There are many leader formulae, but they don’t all involve buying a knotless tapered leader. If you are a cheapskate like me you can make your own. At the very least you want to step down three times. The butt section should be approx 2/3rds the diameter of the flyline tip.
On my 5WT practise leader I often use 3’ 40lbs/.44mm, 3’ 25lbs/.37mm, 4’ 12lbs/0.29mm. That’s what I have here that’s handy. Ideally however the butt section should definitely be a little thicker and I would use 4 or even five steps for best results.
This is John Water’s 5WT accuracy leader he posted on the Board some time ago…
112cms of 0.60mm
54cms of 0.45mm
31cms of 0.35mm
18cms of 0.25mm
45cms of 0.20mm
So if you are experiencing casting problems, the first thing to check your leader. Having no butt section is the casting equivalent of trying to ride a kicking mule!
Cheers, Paul