More than a Pinch

He’s got two videos specifically on the snake head shot, one posted 8 years ago and another 4 years later - Paul goes from a bearded skin-head to sporting some serious dreads - it’s doable! As in most of the updates available in the Master Class videos, there is some real gold to be mined. The update’s biggest innovations are the swelling music in the drone-shot intro, Paul’s swim, Ash’s cameo, and the instructional interlude featuring a striped fly line (from 6:00 to 8:55) that clearly shows the slips and stops in the snakehead cast. And he mentions the Slide Load, a key component of the SHS and described by Joan Wulf’s Fly Casting Techniques and visually here by George Roberts. 

I don’t know where I’ve been and what’s the matter with me (so many things), but I just yesterday discovered the striped-line instruction. Maybe I saw it a few years ago but was too distracted by the rest of my instruction to remember it. But there it is. The earlier instruction describes the backcast or pickup as a slip-touch (pinch)-shoot. The later one depicts a slip-haul-shoot - the duration of the line grab is more than a touch and is highlighted in a stop action/slo mo segment.  Paul gives a bit of a haul going to his “V” hand position whence he shoots. In a way there’s a symmetry in the back and forward cast. There’s a slip-to-haul-shoot in each direction. Slide loading is performed on the pickup and on the move forward. 

I took it to the grass this morning and found it was easy enough to implement. I could even practice it deconstructed, allowing the line to fall to the ground on the backcast - just to demonstrate the symmetry and to slow myself down a bit. Still I have to do more work on tracking and timing. And the efficient use of my whole body supporting all of this. I think about Richard’s Saturday FP and how the result of a SLP for the bendy stick in floor ball compares to the bendy fly rod. I imagine training one might benefit the other (think “wall ball” or “ceiling ball”). Each stroke follows a SLP at its business end but each is differently constrained - the hockey stroke by the flat surface of the floor and the flyline by the desire for a straight fly leg. The former is enforced, the latter trained but the organization of the rest of the body in support should be similar. You instructors decide. 

The LA River after the Rains: The rain wasn’t transformative. No rock-rolling that I could see. The river bed looks cleaner and the island grasses are all lying down but not much more. But the carp moved around. I walked a couple of miles over two days. The river was cooler (temps have dropped into the 40s at night here) and the fish were not out and visible until late morning. The usual spots upstream seemed less populated but a deep run above a long deep pool had fish stacked up. I caught one medium sized fish that was barely too big a load for the osprey whose talons had freshly scarred its back and flank. The wounds looked ouchy.

David Siskind