At the casting club today I was wittering about the value of practice: of course we want to make sure that what we are repeating/reinforcing during practice sessions is "good".
In my own "style free" practice there are two things I check:

• am I getting good turnover of my leader (for my practice I use saltwater leaders so I'm never attempting to dump slack near the "fly")
• is my leader free of knots ... indicating my casts free of tailing loops

by my thinking if I'm making shapes with a line and achieving both, then I'm making a cast.
I sometimes practice in the dark so watching loops isn't always an option.

How do you assess the quality of your own practice?

Andrew

Well I'm not an instructor and am 100% self taught so my casting is somewhat eccentric anyway. I never practice something I can already do - when I practice it is to learn something new or to improve something I don't do well.

Alternatively I'll want to test something out by using different tackle. Recently I mentioned speycasting a 5 weight line through a 12 weight rod and the same line through a 4 weight rod of the same length and discovering that the softer rod threw a much, much longer line. Successful session!

I also like puzzles in casting and one I have been very taken with over the past couple of years and never figured out is why a very slow rod will pick up much more line in a spey cast than a fast rod. My heavy greenheart rod will pick up 12 yards of line in front of the rod and ping out another 10 yards. A sage TCR wont even pick up 5 yards of line in front of the rod and then make a useful spey cast.

To me a successful session is discovering something I didn't know before.

interesting question, i practice form really,

weightless casting, aiming to use as little input as possible to tune in,

then false cast to practice consistency, 30 hauled false casts to an egg timer, stop, rest, then another 30 false casts, this is very good for honing loop shape and really helps the back cast for some reason, i focus on one thing at a time then continue with the focus on something else.

also like accuracy slightly outside my comfort range, 3 rings and walk about a bit so the distance varies,

interesting what you say about turn over, this tends to be the only bit i really think about and mess around with when casting.

Interesting stuff. I have only recently started practicing and try to put my leader in between tree branches from about 20ft with as few casts as possible and am finding that a slow rod is the best tool for me.

20' is the hardest thing to do, 2' of line to load the rod

Its one of the reasons, I came into the casting forum. The tree is like a willow (not much of a gardener) and I found it easier with a slow rod to pick my way through the branches. With a fast rod, I found that it loaded too quickly and the higher line speed committed you sooner. I thought I would scratch around on the forum as the slow rod seemed to be against conventional wisdom.

I then got sidetracked into casting models and never asked my question

I like slow rods with a heavy blank as they spey cast better and cast better at short distances for me VGB - although Ohanzee has tried to convert me

This is a typical piece of my local stream, probably less overgrown than others:



Not really suitable for spey casting, but my garden is a reasonable representation

Vince this is why there is a resurgence in interest in both cane and glass rods. I have a small Scott glass rod and it's a joy to use in confined spaces
Andrew

Andrew

I've had a play



5ft 3 inches 3 wt. Just waiting for the season to start and I have a steffen bros blank on order for later this year.

This rod is so slow you can see the cast develop easily which is where I twigged the resonance connection.

regards

Vince

PS Thanks for the itinerant angler blog tip. I've listened to 10 pod casts so far, much better than radio 2.