Paul Arden | Tuesday, 17 February 2026
It’s quite often the case that a well-known and highly respected person will make a statement that then becomes repeated as fact because of who stated it. (Not that that would ever apply to me of course!) Now I have been wrong very many times in my life and on a broad range of subjects. My wife knows this very well, apparently.
Sometimes I get quoted on something that I wrote almost 30 years ago and it is most certainly wrong. I’m sure there are things that I currently write too, that will be discovered as being wrong in the future. By definiton if we were always right then we would have stopped learning. So I have no problems with being corrected. In fact I’m grateful for the correction.
The reason I mention this is because “constant acceleration” during the Casting Stroke is extremely questionable to my mind, and it regularly comes up, particularly when teaching/preparing US fly casting instructors.
“Constant acceleration occurs when an object's velocity changes by the same amount every second, resulting in a uniform increase or decrease in speed.” This is not what we see in flycasting. In fact if we did physically achieve it, then most contibutors on the Board at least, believe a tailing loop would actually be the result.
https://www.sexyloops.co.uk/theboard/viewtopic.php?t=3796
Even if constant acceleration was something desireable, then my next question would be how to actually acheive it? Is it constant angular acceleration? (Which the Casting Analyser measures). Or does it include translational movement? We are not talking about being smooth or continuous; constant acceleration is very specific and means that the velocity changes at a uniform rate. We don’t see this in graphs. The argument I’ve heard that we don’t see this is because “we can’t”. Which isn’t very helpful!
Personally I think that we actually want a two stage acceleration, with a well timed hit late in the rotation… for distance. For accuracy, sure many of us rotate the rod through the stroke. I would expect such a cast to appear closer to constant acceleration. But even then I would be extremely surprised if the total stroke showed true constant accerelation. None of the accerlation profiles I have seen have been constant and all have exhibited a distinct upwards curve, when the complete stroke is studied
I’ve actually heard instructors trying to teach students that the acceleration needs to be constant! What on Earth a student is supposed to do with this dubious information I have no idea. “Make your acceleration more constant!” “How?” But I actually think it's simoly the wrong indormatiom
Over here in Malaysia we are celebrating Year of the Fire Horse. Gong Xi Fa Cai! Year of the Snakehead was great. Now I'm looking forward the Fire Horse. James would ride it. He’s an expert.
Apparently my replacement phone has been delivered. Thank goodness. Because there is nothing predictable about the predictive text on this phone now. Either Apple has an algorithm to become completely useless, so that any owner (me) is forced to buy a new phone… because it’s tiring to have to retype every single word, especially those spelt correctly. Or… well I don’t know, maybe it thinks I’m Malaysian or an Arab.
TP (to) give you am (an) example, the dawned (damned) phone has Maude (made) tegar (these) Changs (changes) for ke (me) on corrector (correctly) spektrum (spelt) Worms (words). It’s surreal. Itu (it’s) luke (like) Livin (living) in SPRM (some) Pat taller (parallel) universe. QA kera (wankers).
Talking of languages, next week I start online tutoring in the Malay language. I have lots of compelling reasons ta learn this. So that’s EXCO tong (exciting). And maybe then the phone will make more sense. But I doubt it.
Habel a dan Yasrid Qwek!
(Have a fantastic week)
Cheers, Paul