Rarely in two sports is it possible to identify so many
similarities and, at the same time, so many disparities
than in fishing and golf.
For a start, I’m not sure that angling can be fairly
described as a sport. With the exception of match fishing
it lacks the formal boundaries of competition. This is not
to deny the competitiveness of anglers. “How many?”
followed by “how big?” must be the questions
most asked of all anglers.
Even those anglers who prefer to think of the qualitative
experience will still keep a tally up to a point. But most,
I think, would baulk at the practice encountered in one
angler, spotted by a fishing friend, recording his every
fish with a mechanical “clicker”.
Both sports have their etiquette. In golf it seems to be
more sharply defined. I know golfers who would think nothing
about fiddling a company expense claim back at the office,
scrupulously upholding the rules on the course.
Where golf falls down somewhat is that, when all is said
and done, it is a game. You meet your pals, enjoy the round,
down some balls, then retire to the 19th hole.
Fishing, on the other hand, is a way of life. While golfers
know when to quit, anglers do not. How many suppers have
shrivelled in the oven and marriage foundations shuddered
under the magnificent obsession that I would call the “one
last cast” syndrome?
“I’ll just have one last cast,” loosely
translated means: “Yes you do have time to watch Gone
with the Wind, decorate the house, take a lover and do the
Christmas shopping. I’ll be along presently.”
Yet here again are similarities. One last cast is difficult
because of the eternal desire to do a better one. Just as
the golfer can take satisfaction on those occasions that
swing, timing and the judgement of distance come together
in a single satisfying sweep, so the angler can bristle
with contentment at the perfectly executed cast.
There may not be a fish on the end of it, just as the ball
might take a four-put to find the hole, but when - swing
or cast - this single significant part of the game, feels
right, then so do you.
In the same way that golfers will try to improve their
swings, I’m always looking for casting tips. Two weeks
ago I had the chance to see whether practice and tuition
had done any good, putting my action through the Sage Casting
Analyser,* a rate gyroscope device designed by Noel Perkins,
a professor of mechanical engineering at the University
of Michigan, working with Bruce Richards, a US fly casting
expert.
The Sportfish fly fishing centre in Reading, a UK distributor
of Sage rods, had one of the machines hooked up to the new
Sage Z-Axis rod with Jerry Siem, the rod’s designer
on hand to explain the fundamentals of a good cast.
The first thing I learned is that every angler has a “casting
signature”. The squiggly line on the analyser graph
that looked like the result of a badly presented fly was
in fact representing the arc, symmetry and smoothness of
the cast.
The casting report alongside the graph resembled the piece
of paper I used to hide from my parents at the end of school
term, except that, amazingly, the bits described as excellent
or good, outnumbered the parts saying “needs work”
by some margin. One weakness – a common one this –
is that I was putting too much oomph in to my forward movement.
I was also forgetting to “stop” the cast out
front.
The best way I know of describing a casting action is the
flick you could give to a paint brush if you wanted to spray
paint both behind your back and on to a wall in front of
you. Instead of the paintbrush, you are holding the rod
that behaves like a spring responding to the jerk of your
hand and arm.
To make the initial flick you must stop your arm on its
backward jerk after raising the line off the water. Equally
- and this is something I need to improve – it’s
important to make that same jerk, or stop, on the forward
cast. Jerry Siem asked me to jump off the floor to find
a natural position. My tendency had been to lean forward
in to the cast. Good casters let the rod do all the work
and make their action look effortless.
Siem showed me how he dragged the line slightly when converting
the backward load to the forward cast, improving the smoothness
of presentation. He also showed how, when hauling line –
pulling slack line back through the rings during the cast
– you need to keep it taught all the time. Anything
that allows line to go slack within the cast is going to
spoil it.
Casting alone isn’t fishing. It’s easy to find
yourself thinking more about your cast than you are about
the whereabouts and feeding behaviour of the fish. But in
fly fishing at least, it’s worth ensuring that your
one last cast is a good one. If not, there’s always
one more.
*Anyone interested in trying the analyser in the UK
can call Sportfish Fly Fishing Centre at 0118 930 3860.
www.sportfish.co.uk
