Learning to fly

Being so warm that it could snow here, yesterday and today were perfect days to get out and practice fly casting. The basics are a jumble of physics and sports and meditation. In practice you learn that waving a line weighing eight pounds, attached to a nine foot graphite pole is tiring.

I asked Ashley for some yarn with which to make practice flies, and then tied the line to the leader to the tippet to the yarn fly.

I discovered that today I could cast more accurately with my left than with my right. I also learned that casting into the wind not only is frustrating and tiring, but produces wind knots that took ten minutes of concentrated effort to untangle (I did not have on hand or rather on face close focus glasses; those magnifiers that attach to the bill of a hat or cap and flip-down are looking rather tempting). In untangling I figured out why fly fisherfolk do not cheat by using loop to loop knots close to the fly -- wind knots! With flies being so lightweight, the knot weighs as much as the fly and will orbit the fly, or perhaps more accurately the fly and the knot will orbit the leader/line!

Unless I am mistaken, my loops are tight like they are suppose to be. Casting over either shoulder (to change the target and to counter lateral wind drift) is not a problem. Loading the pole and then stopping at the 45 degree mark is more challenging. Doing all that with the arm without help from the wrist is challenging. I was able to practice for 40 minutes straight.