Basics · a card
How do I use video to coach a student's casting?
Film against a dark background with the line in the light, frame only the half of the cast you are diagnosing, and scrub one-hundredth of a second at a time to measure the arc, the drift and the tail.
Video is a tool, not the teacher — the coach is still the most important person. Used properly it shows the stop, the drift and the tail.
What the instructor says
- Set the scene. Dark trees behind, the line in the light — an orange line glows. iPad on a lawn chair, no tripod; the free app is HUDL Technique (captions spell it “Huddle”).
- Shoot half a line. Frame the back cast, not the whole line. 75 feet in one frame needs 80 feet of distance.
- Slow it to a hundredth. Full, half, quarter and one-eighth speed, then freeze and scrub one one-hundredth of a second at a time (4.35, 4.36, 4.48). Remotely, both open the clip and work to “four point eight seven seconds”, 2,000 miles apart.
- Measure it. Freeze at the stop, draw the angle from rod to hand — 98°. Mark the stop and the real stop — the gap is the drift.
- Catch the tail and the load. White yarn on the tip dips and comes back up on a tail; little bend at 12 o’clock means creep or inappropriate power.
Putting it to work
- Set the iPad up before the student arrives.
- Film half the cast, freeze on the stop.
- Mark the stop, measure the arc.
- Compare clips side by side, one-eighth speed.
Source
From the FFI CI walkthrough series by Dayle Mazzarella (Chapter 3 — FFI Casting Instructor Certification Tasks, Fly Fishing Coach International), lesson 26, 00:00:47, 00:01:20, 00:03:23, 00:05:11, 00:07:49, 00:09:48, 00:10:41 and 00:13:15. See the video library for the series and the CI exam section for the teaching tasks; terms follow the FFI Fly Casting Definitions.