The following is the second in a continuing series of excepts from George Robert’s new book, “Master the Cast.” His publisher was generous enough let FlyFish.com share some of it with its readers…Enjoy!

Forming the Loop
A good casting stroke enacts a smooth, continuous acceleration and concludes with an abrupt stop. When the rod stops on the forward stroke and the rod unloads, the airborne fly line, which you’ve been pulling from behind you, continues to soar forward. The line is anchored at the rod tip, and when the following fly line passes over the rod tip, a loop forms. The bottom leg of this loop remains anchored at the rod while the top leg continues to unroll forward.

To become a good fly caster you must learn how to form tight loops. A tight loop is the most efficient way to transfer the rod’s energy toward the target, because a tight loop focuses all of the energy from the cast into a very narrow area. Forming a tight loop is critical to distance casting: the tighter the loop you can form, the farther and faster your cast will travel. Also, tight loops are less wind resistant than wide loops and are a must for casting into a wind.

The size of the loop is determined by the position of the rod tip relative to the path of the following fly line at the conclusion of the casting stroke. In a good fly cast, the rod unloads just beneath the path of the following fly line. The fly line that is anchored at the rod tip forms the bottom leg of the loop. The rod tip, when it recoils back into a straight position, is only several inches beneath the path of the following fly line, that is, the top leg of the loop. A good loop looks like a narrow U or V that has been tipped on its side.

If, at the end of the casting stroke, the distance between the rod tip and the path of the following fly line is significant, then the loop will be wide. Wide loops transfer power inefficiently; they don’t travel as far, or nearly as fast, as narrow loops. Also, wide loops are more wind resistant than narrow loops and are ineffective when casting into the wind.

To form a tight loop you must accelerate the rod tip along a straight-line path throughout the casting arc, and then drop it only slightly at the end of the stroke as you stop the rod to unload it. It’s important to remember that the cast will assume whatever shape the rod tip has traveled. If the rod tip moves along a straight path, the cast will assume a narrow or tight loop. But if the rod tip moves in a curved or convex path, the cast will assume a wide loop or nonloop.

A good casting stroke begins slowly and accelerates smoothly. If you use too much speed at the beginning of the stroke, you’ll shock the rod and destroy the cast. Very often a short, jerky casting stroke causes the rod tip to move in a concave path. This, in turn, causes the rod to unload above, rather than below, the path of the following fly line. This results in what’s known as a tailing loop or cross-loop: the legs of the loop are crossed rather than open-ended. Tailing loops can tie knots in your leader (fly-fishers refer to these as wind knots, although they have nothing to do with the wind). In severe cases, tailing loops can also tie knots in your fly line. On short casts, tailing loops are most often caused by jerky casting stokes. Remember that on a good casting stroke the rod accelerates smoothly.

The loop of line is the single best piece of data to analyze your cast, for it always tells you exactly what the rod tip did during the casting stroke.

Rod-Arm Mechanics
Until now we’ve spoken only of how the fly rod works and what it does during the cast. Now we must talk of what the rod arm does during the cast, for it’s the rod arm’s responsibility to make the fly rod operate properly.

In all situations, fly casters will stand or fall according to the proficiency of their rod arm. Graceful, effortless, precise fly casting is the result of a well-developed set of rod-arm mechanics. Awkward, laborious, inaccurate fly casting is the result of poor rod-arm mechanics. The vast majority of the casting problems ultimately can be attributed to poor rod-arm mechanics. All the principal gains you’ll make as a fly caster - including gains in distance, power, and accuracy - will come through refining your rod-arm mechanics.

In summation : your rod-arm mechanics will make or break your cast.

The Grip
There’s nothing glamorous about the way an angler grips a fly rod, which is why, I believe, many fly-fishers forsake this early in their learning and simply hold the rod however feels comfortable or natural to them. However, the way you hold the rod is critical. Gripping the rod properly makes the most of your rod-arm mechanics, while a poor grip can effectively destroy your cast. Proper rod grip is particularly important for distance casting.

How you grip the fly rod is at least as important to your casting stroke as a professional golfer’s grip is to his swing. The average fly-fisher simply picks up a rod and begins waving it with little thought, if any, as to how the cork rests in his hand.

If you want to become a good fly caster, you must learn to set your hand upon the cork handle deliberately and properly, each and every time prior to the beginning of the cast.

For virtually all of my fishing, freshwater as well as salt, I use a single grip. It’s known by several names. Mel Krieger calls it the key grip (that’s how I’ll refer to it in this book). Krieger also refers to it, in his popular book The Essence of Flycasting, as the extended finger grip (not to be confused with either of the grips we discuss in this section that use an extended forefinger).

The key grip is known by several other names. Joan Wulff identifies it as Grip #1 in her book Joan Wulff’s Fly Casting Techniques. Chico Fernandez, in his video titled The Art of Fly Casting, calls it the handshake grip (similar to the handshake grip in tennis). The key grip is nearly identical to the left-hand grip in golf.

To form the key grip, lay the rod handle across your hand at such an angle that the cork lies across the middle joint of your index finger and also across the base of your little finger. Place your thumb on top of the rod handle so that it’s in line with the spine or backbone of the rod (that is, in line with the feet of the guides on the opposite side of the rod). The pad of your thumb should be pressed against the cork, and your thumb should be flexed rather than lying flat against the cork. This puts your thumb in optimum “pushing” position, allowing you to load the rod well on the forward stroke. Placing your thumb flat against the cork, as so many fly-fishers do, will not afford you the same amount of “pushing” power as will the flexed thumb. Allowing your thumb to roll off to the side of the handle, or placing the tip of your thumb (rather than the pad) against the cork, both greatly diminish your ability to load the rod on the forward stroke.

The pad of your index finger should be directly opposite the pad of your thumb on the other side of the cork handle. The index finger gives you support to help load the rod well during the back-cast stroke. Whether I’m holding the slim, cigar-shaped handle of a delicate trout rod, or the beefy full-Wells grip of a saltwater rod, the handle rests in the crook of the first joint of my index finger (that is, the joint nearest my fingertip).

The key grip holds the cork handle primarily between the thumb and index finger, as you would hold a key to turn it in a lock. This is virtually identical to how you would use your thumb and index finger to hold the handle of a screwdriver to put torque on a screw.

Two fairly common grips, both of which are much more popular with trout anglers than with saltwater fly-fishers, extend the forefinger along the rod handle. One grip places the index finger on top of the handle, directly in line with the spine or backbone of the rod, while the other lays the index finger along the side of the cork. Neither of these grips uses the index finger for support to load the rod during the back-cast stroke (which I believe becomes critical when trying to cast distance using heavier tackle), nor do they make full use of the hand’s natural strength to load the rod during the forward stroke.

When you adopt the key grip, it’s critical that the cork handle is pushed up under the fleshy pad at the inside heel of your palm. With the handle pushed up under the fleshy pad, I have the sensation that my hand is “on top of” the cork rather than simply wrapped around it.

When you grip the rod handle properly, the rod becomes an extension of your forearm, and the rod butt will be directly in line with the underside of your forearm. That is, when you look down upon the thumbnail of your rod hand, nearly all of the rod butt will be hidden from view by your forearm. Remember that the more abruptly you can stop the rod, the more of the rod’s power gets transferred into the fly line. If you keep the rod butt in line with the underside of your forearm and push forward on the rod handle with the thumb of your rod hand as far as you can while pulling back on the cork with your lower fingers, you’ll see that the structure of your hand, wrist, and forearm create a very solid arm-rod connection. This structure forces the rod butt, at the end of the forward stroke, to stop abruptly. Gripping the rod properly creates the strongest possible link for the arm-rod connection.

If you allow the rod handle to lie along the center of your palm at the base of your thumb (more or less along your lifeline), with the rod butt in full view as you look down upon the thumbnail of your rod hand, you’ll notice that the rod butt can waggle a bit, even when you grip the handle tightly. The arm-rod link is not nearly as strong, which means you cannot stop the rod as abruptly as you can when you keep the rod butt in line with the underside of your forearm. One-eighth inch of movement at the butt of the rod may seem insignificant, but this distance will be magnified greatly at the rod tip. The rod will stop over a much greater distance, and you’ll transfer less power from the loaded rod into the fly line. You’ll never notice the effects of this on a 30 or even a 50-foot cast, but you will notice the negative effects on your longest casts.

Where you place your hand along the length of the cork handle is a matter of preference. In most cases I prefer to keep my hand near the top of the handle. Some fly-fishers prefer to place their hand closer to the reel. Particularly if you have a heavy reel, your outfit may balance better in your hand if you grip the handle fairly close to the reel. Also, gripping the handle close to the reel will, in effect, lengthen your rod by a few inches.

One word of caution about gripping the rod near the top of the handle: never place your hand so high on the handle that your thumb overhangs the crown of a full-Wells grip, or that it touches the graphite on a cigar-shaped grip or a half-Wells or western-style grip.

The tendency of many beginners is to clutch the handle in a death grip. This will fatigue your hand quickly and make a twenty-minute practice session seem like torture. For most of your casting stroke, you need only to grip the rod firmly enough to keep it from moving around in your hand as you cast. As we discuss later, the only time you need to grip the rod more firmly than this is when you squeeze the handle firmly and quickly at the end of the stroke to help you stop the rod abruptly.

Occasionally I’ll see a fly-fisher who has formed the bad habit of gripping the rod handle so loosely that it actually rattles back and forth in his hand while he casts. That is, the pad of his thumb loses contact with the cork during the back cast, and his index finger loses contact with the cork during the forward cast. This is perhaps the weakest - and worst - of all possible grips.

I also see a good number of anglers who allow the rod handle to rotate in their hand during the casting sequence so that their thumb is no longer in line with the spine of the rod. This is equally bad. Once you’ve adopted your grip and begun to cast, the rod should not move in your hand; nor should any part of your hand lose contact with the grip, however briefly.

A number of students complain, initially, that the key grip feels unnatural to them. My stock answer to this is that fly casting is among the most unnatural of acts. The key grip might feel strange to you at first. However, if you spend only ten or fifteen minutes a day working with this grip - not only while you’re casting, but anytime you get a moment to pick up the butt section of your rod - it will begin to feel much more comfortable and natural. As you progress as a fly caster, you’ll come to understand the advantages this grip affords you in terms of strength, power, support, and control. In time, you’ll wonder how you managed to cast any other way.

Master The Cast - Part 1 Master The Cast - Part 3