08-10-2012, 02:00 AM
Thanks, Dave for both of your thoughtful replies. I will watch more videos and search for pendulum casting to watch and I will practice more and likely a little this evening at the local pond to try a few things differently.
I think I might understand more of what is going wrong.
For comparison purposes, I should state that I do cast a wide range of normal rods very well. Your suggestion to work my way up in lure weight has already been done on my large collection of rods where I've found optimizing the lure weight to the lure weight it's designed to cast makes casting very effective, so I select the best rod for the lure weight and push the range with practice time to get a feel for what the rod can do.
I figure a one ounce lure is too much outside the 3 - 7 ounce lure weight range of my new monster rod and won't sufficiently load the rod to achieve the performance that it is designed to produce.
After, poor casting with the huge 23 foot surf casting rod, I cast a one ounce lure about 200 feet effortlessly with my 7 foot 6 inch rod that I've fished a lot. In the few days after that, I've thought about that contrast a lot and think I understand what is wrong.
Strength is not an issue. I'm an athlete. Once I learn the technique, my strength will enable me to make long casts. I also intend to use my endurance for cast and retrieve lure fishing with swim bait which is not the usual use for surf casting rods which are usually used to cast out bait and then wait. Jon told me that would wear anyone out, but I'm up to the challenge and tend to make fishing athletic anyway with my quick coverage of a lot of shore and long hikes.
I'm into karate and long distance bicycle racing and recent out of the blue rowing where I had to row my fly fishing pontoon boat back against a strong headwind which took hours of very powerful rowing when I haven't used it for many years prior to that showed me that my fitness is high because I had no muscle soreness at all the next days. I don't mean to brag and I only state this to definitively blame my poor casting of only this one rod on not yet discovering and achieving the proper technique for this rod. I watch videos and read books, but it's just not registering for me to the motions and feel I still need to achieve.
Since I have quite a collection of rods, going from one to the next is often only a small change and my technique naturally adapts. But, nothing I have comes anywhere close to this monster rod and my technique for it has to be so different that it isn't just naturally adapting that comes with practice.
My current thinking is that I need to put less power into the start of the cast to be able to continue with uniform acceleration.
When I put everything into the start of the cast, I suppose the inertia of the lure allows it to catch up following the rod tip to produce less line tension and the rod doesn't load up with a good bend. This theory corresponds with my experience that the harder I try, the shorter the cast.
I'll go try starting my cast slow and uniformly accelerating now.
Ronald : )
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I think I might understand more of what is going wrong.
For comparison purposes, I should state that I do cast a wide range of normal rods very well. Your suggestion to work my way up in lure weight has already been done on my large collection of rods where I've found optimizing the lure weight to the lure weight it's designed to cast makes casting very effective, so I select the best rod for the lure weight and push the range with practice time to get a feel for what the rod can do.
I figure a one ounce lure is too much outside the 3 - 7 ounce lure weight range of my new monster rod and won't sufficiently load the rod to achieve the performance that it is designed to produce.
After, poor casting with the huge 23 foot surf casting rod, I cast a one ounce lure about 200 feet effortlessly with my 7 foot 6 inch rod that I've fished a lot. In the few days after that, I've thought about that contrast a lot and think I understand what is wrong.
Strength is not an issue. I'm an athlete. Once I learn the technique, my strength will enable me to make long casts. I also intend to use my endurance for cast and retrieve lure fishing with swim bait which is not the usual use for surf casting rods which are usually used to cast out bait and then wait. Jon told me that would wear anyone out, but I'm up to the challenge and tend to make fishing athletic anyway with my quick coverage of a lot of shore and long hikes.
I'm into karate and long distance bicycle racing and recent out of the blue rowing where I had to row my fly fishing pontoon boat back against a strong headwind which took hours of very powerful rowing when I haven't used it for many years prior to that showed me that my fitness is high because I had no muscle soreness at all the next days. I don't mean to brag and I only state this to definitively blame my poor casting of only this one rod on not yet discovering and achieving the proper technique for this rod. I watch videos and read books, but it's just not registering for me to the motions and feel I still need to achieve.
Since I have quite a collection of rods, going from one to the next is often only a small change and my technique naturally adapts. But, nothing I have comes anywhere close to this monster rod and my technique for it has to be so different that it isn't just naturally adapting that comes with practice.
My current thinking is that I need to put less power into the start of the cast to be able to continue with uniform acceleration.
When I put everything into the start of the cast, I suppose the inertia of the lure allows it to catch up following the rod tip to produce less line tension and the rod doesn't load up with a good bend. This theory corresponds with my experience that the harder I try, the shorter the cast.
I'll go try starting my cast slow and uniformly accelerating now.
Ronald : )
[signature]