Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 17 January 2026
As I was preparing for my CI examination Paul was talking about how assessors love teaching gadgets. And wondered what I had for gadgets. Or that I should come up with something clever. Easy to be clever on demand, thank you Paul! I had a piece of pink string that I used for making targets. Not very inventive or original. The upside with this is that it can be used for showing the line while taking the focus away from the tackle for a bit. And it can be nifty to show how hauling really works. He mentioned all of the nice things he had seen before. People folding coffee filters to represent casting arcs and things. So what did I have to offer? The little teaching I had been doing had not been using gadgets and was more rod focused.
But in the end I came up with something.
Having some gadgets prepared for your teaching can be a good idea. You won’t be standing there showing off by mistake. When I get a rod in my hands things can start to happen, casting happens. It is like it takes active effort to not do things when holding a rod. I recently found out that I do snake rolls and things like that during my pantomime training with the rod but. I think showing off can be discouraging for some students, especially beginners. And it takes the focus away from what’s important. When teaching, touch the rod and cast only as much as needed.
When I was sitting in the cabin away from everything last summer I got an idea for a teaching gadget. I usually have a folding ruler in my kit, so that I can create my intricate leaders on the go. I sent Paul a message trying to describe what I had come up with. Just this time I had not brought my ruler. So I draw a picture of it. The response wasn’t very encouraging, it was silent. So I figured it wasn’t good or something.
At home from the cabin I had a session with Paul. We were talking about CI stuff. I hand not got any better idea for gadgets than my foldable ruler so I had brought it. While we were talking about things I brought it out to use as part of my description and then Paul got it! He actually liked my gadget and use of it. I used it to describe the correlation between casting arc, the amount of line carried, power and things around that topic. We later found it to be useful for visualising the casting arc and how a tailing loop can happen by having a to narrow casting arc.
The foldable ruler was appreciated at my CI exam and the foldable ruler doesn’t seem to be so common in the UK at least so I gave my assessor the ruler after the test. And I brought some of them to Paul when I visited him. They seemed to make great company to falling/dancing giraffe toys he has for teaching momentum transfer.
So how I use it. First set it up to show a cast where casting arc matches bend, amount of line carried and power applied. We get a nice straight line path.
We open up the angle, keeping the power applied the same. The two arms that represents the line path starts to point upward. We get a domed rod leg, a wide open loop. To fix this we either have to bring them back to gather by narrowing the arc. Or pull them down to point towards each other again. Increase rod bend by applying more power.
Close the angle and we can see that things starts to look messy. The line path points down, the fly leg is directed towards the rod leg. Probably a tailing loop. We either have to open up the casting angle or reduce the power so the line doesn’t dips down.
Use it to actually visualise the casting arc and what happens when, for example, shorten the casting arc and get a tailing loop. Start to false cast and set up the ruler to match the arc you are using. Do some false casting doing nice loops and stop at the positions visualised by the ruler and then do a false cast where you stop the rod too early and you “will” get a tailing loop. By keeping the power the same. And you get a clear visual representation that you changed the casting arc.
