If anyone's seen me cast, they'll know that I've been plagued by the tailing loop syndrome. Admittedly it's not as severe now as it once was, but when buck fever takes over I can guarantee the first cast will end with the fly catching the end of the fly line, ruining the first shot at a decent fish ..... perhaps the only one seen all day.

I've picked up a few tips along the way ... including Justin's classic "Hey George! me and Morsie reckon you should cast backwards all the time" indicating that my backcast isn't too bad ... I just regularly f*#k up my forecast.

Over the past month or two in preparation for an extended CI trip, I've been practising hard to eliminate the tailing loop and going back to basics, starting with short [bugger all line out of the tip] to medium distance [around 40' of line out] and casting at various speeds ... slow, medium and fast ..... with and without single and double hauls thrown in.

The other day I changed the seriously knotted leader with some new material I had recently puchased - Rio Hard Mono . It made a huge difference - sure the trailing piece of wool still had the wobbles from time to time, but it wasn't dropping below the leading line all that often.

Second discovery - my son came over to chat whilst I was casting with about 30' of line out, and rather than stop what I was doing I just kept the rod pointing back and forth and essentially only applying power with the haul. After a minute or so, what I noticed was that none of the casts had a tailing loop - neither fore or backhand!

That night I got on-line, as you do, and came across this quote from Galah on Flylife "Even when you're casting a huge amount of line, the power is coming from the load in the rod, and from your line-haul, not so much smashing your rod arm back and forth. I know when I have my double-haul cranking, because it feels like I'm casting with the haul, not the rod, virtually just "pointing the rod in the right direction" with my rod hand and powering the line with the haul (of course that’s not quite reality, but it sort-of feels a bit like that)."

The next morning I was back in the yard trying it out ... Yep worked a treat to 40' so I pulled another 20' of line off the reel so I could shoot it out over the fence onto the road, got the cast working nice and easy, then powered into the forward cast to shoot the line.

Well it barely went past the fence, and that bit that did was real ugly. Pulled it back in and tried again, this time with far less oooompffff ......

Sure, I'm still going to get tailing loops, that's a part of my mental makeup where I'll try and rush things, and I'm resigned to that, but I think I may have finally learnt a few more things that others with the same issue could benefit from

1. take a valium or two before casting to relax, both mentally and physically
2. power off ..... less = more
3. if you've two arms, use them both
4. get your whole body into an easy rhythm
5. watch the fly to see what it is doing so you can make small corrections to the cast
6. use decent leader material - and not just the stuff you've pulled off a spinning reel

Here endeth the sermon for today ... now off to the physio to have some work done on a rotator cuff issue

Gav,

I'm actually surprised at how little effort it takes - just spent the last 15 minutes out the back, and for the first few minutes I started out with the little double hauls to get the feel of the power applied through the rod tip - I then dropped them out of the routine and just continued with the one hand cast, applying a touch of acceleration/power/stop at the same time as if I was double hauling.

Absolutely flabbergasted this little routine has made to the difference of my forecast in just a couple of quick sessions