Have I Been Doing it Wrong - The Underhand Cast?

[Mickfish]

In these Covid times reading about fishing and watching many of the very good instructional films on You Tube can be an absorbing distraction.

Yesterday I watched a demonstration by Klaus Frimoor, one of the main casting demonstrator's for Loop. The film (not brilliant quality) is based on a demo he was doing (with others like Simon Gawesworth) in front of a US audience I guess. At the end of the film (link included in this post) he casts whilst snapping the rod into his body. A US man in the audience asks "where do you snap into". KF answers "here where it hurts." He snapped into his lower abdomen and put out a lovely line with tight loops. He then said if you cast above here (upper stomach/lower ribcage) you open the loop by lowering the rod - and then he shows this.

The other day I bought a Maxcatch 17' 25 gram head for trout/sea trout streamer fishing - only £17, I'd never bought anything before from this Chinese company and I didn't want to spend much. The head looks lovely so I set it up with some 40lb mono running line (never used mono before). So I took the outfit with an 11' switch rod into my garden. It's not Chatsworth but in between catching this or that piece of vegetation I can put a modest line out.

I followed Frimoor's advice by snapping into my lower tummy and low and behold it went out beautifully - most certainly helped by the mono RL but the loop was tight and the whole thing was effortless. Now when I watched KF again and his mentor, the great Goran Andersson, both snapping low it struck me that they couldn't do this wading deeply. But next week when I'm grayling fishing I will try this fully fledged Underhand on the river. I don't see many anglers doing the pure underhand like GA but all of us who use shorter heads owe a massive debt of gratitude to him. So will next week reveal whether I have been doing it wrong by snapping to higher into my body? We'll see.

Mick

 

[ibm59]

This should be good.
Think there’s more confusion over what actually constitutes an underhand cast than there is over the meaning of switch rod.

 

[Pompero]

Very few people, also in Scandinavia, are true underhand casters, despite having the set up for it (fast actioned rods and short shooting heads). There is also a lot of terminological confusion around it and the term itself was patented by Loop and a part of their marketing and sales strategy twenty years ago. It is also problematic as it is hard to learn, and not as universal as claimed (you mention a problem yourself: water above the waist). It is also not suited to cast really big/heavy flies (Frimor admits this himself in a podcast on scandinavian style lines and casting: https://wetflyswing.com/wfs-127-sca...arwater-river-loop-steelhead-atlantic-salmon/).

 

[Rrrr]

Thats what i do with an underhand cast. It garuntees a positive stop at the end of the cast so the rod unloads quick. Dosent seem to work aswel for me with longer scandi lines or deep wading though and higher hands seem to work better for me then stop against my top hand forearm. No idea if this is propper technique or something i stumbled across but seems to work for me.

Sent from my SM-G981B using Tapatalk

 

[Deleted member 945]

Very few people, also in Scandinavia, are true underhand casters, despite having the set up for it (fast actioned rods and short shooting heads). There is also a lot of terminological confusion around it and the term itself was patented by Loop and a part of their marketing and sales strategy twenty years ago. It is also problematic as it is hard to learn, and not as universal as claimed (you mention a problem yourself: water above the waist). It is also not suited to cast really big/heavy flies (Frimor admits this himself in a podcast on scandinavian style lines and casting: https://wetflyswing.com/wfs-127-sca...arwater-river-loop-steelhead-atlantic-salmon/).

You can’t patent a phrase. Just saying

 

[nickolas]

Jess James under the mid night sun on YouTube is well worth a look at for underhand casting.

 

[Deleted member 21259]

This should be good.
Think there’s more confusion over what actually constitutes an underhand cast than there is over the meaning of switch rod.

If you want to view some real confusion take a look at the Spey Line V Shooting Head Thread. A most.......entertaining read

 

[Pompero]

You can’t patent a phrase. Just saying

Sorry, I meant that they tried to do it, bad formulation.

 

[Mickfish]

Jess James under the mid night sun on YouTube is well worth a look at for underhand casting.

Yes Nickolas thank you for that - some beautiful casting BUT look at him, he's producing superbly tight loops but stopping in a much higher position on his chest not lower stomach. He's stopping suddenly to unleash the pent up (kinetic) energy from the rod (sorry about that pseudo scientific bulls**t on my part) with a sort of Andrew Toft, "stop and block" style but very underhand dominated and stopping with a high rod to unleash that tight loop, undermining Klaus Frimoor's claim it would seem.

So it shows you there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Mick

 

[Richardgw]

Yes Nickolas thank you for that - some beautiful casting BUT look at him, he's producing superbly tight loops but stopping in a much higher position on his chest not lower stomach. He's stopping suddenly to unleash the pent up (kinetic) energy from the rod (sorry about that pseudo scientific bulls**t on my part) with a sort of Andrew Toft, "stop and block" style but very underhand dominated and stopping with a high rod to unleash that tight loop, undermining Klaus Frimoor's claim it would seem.

So it shows you there is more than one way to skin a cat.

Mick

This is the same casts as Klaus Frimoor but in this case BOTH hands are higher. Better when wading deep!!!

 

[Mickfish]

This is the same casts as Klaus Frimoor but in this case BOTH hands are higher. Better when wading deep!!!

His upper hand is certainly much higher Richard and is being used mainly as a fulcrum (as is Frimoor's) but he is stopping the bottom hand much higher too, even though many of his casts are made from shallow water.

Look at Goran's and the hands are so close together. Alistair Gowans in his film on spey casting likens this to using gears on a car. Pompero suggested this was a marketing strategy by Loop but I think that undermines Andersson's pioneering, even revolutionary role in changing most people's approach to salmon casting in Europe and in the US. I don't think anyone I can think of has been so influential as this man in this context. I love to watch a good caster put out a long line - my max was the old Snowbee 3D/64' heads. Some go a lot longer but not many have this skill. Andersson in promoting the UH cast asked the simple question - "why work so hard?" Indeed, why should we when scandi style casting has made our fishing so much more pleasurable?

Mick

 

[Icelander05]

I think that it is important to lift the right hand higher, than just let it fall down and move the left hand towards the body. If you don‘t lift the right hand and move the left hand only from your body your rod tip will be far too low resulting in a heavy line stick which makes it hard to get out the line. A lot depends on rod length and length of head and leader. Personally I prefer a more traditional style which enables you to cast heads and full lines. Underhand is prone to heads only.
Icelander05

 

[Dobbo]

The issue is to remember that you anchor the leader not the shooting head, I use 18'/20' ++ leader depending on rod length, make sure you make a deliberately slow lift before the sweep and cast, all the power then comes from the bottom hand .
Best idea then is to find a quiet place to practice practice practice because you'll look like a complete idiot in the beginning

 

[nickolas]

The issue is to remember that you anchor the leader not the shooting head, I use 18'/20' ++ leader depending on rod length, make sure you make a deliberately slow lift before the sweep and cast, all the power then comes from the bottom hand .
Best idea then is to find a quiet place to practice practice practice because you'll look like a complete idiot in the beginning

I will go long with all you have said, also the straighter path the rod tip makes on the forward stroke the tighter the loop. This applies to single had rods as well. To tight and you can get other problems.

 

[Mickfish]

Goran Andersson demonstrating the delicacy and lack of disturbance of just anchoring the leader on to surface. Yes it's just a pond at a fly fair but on rivers too he has shown the same unhurried, smooth and effortless casting: (BTW no prizes for spotting his assistant Benny Hill in the background)

Mick