Stress testing your cast
“We don't rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
Imagine you are walking up a stream and you see an extremely challenging casting situation. You might pass it by figuring it’s not worth attempting because of how tough a cast it would be. Lots of reasons run through your mind to skip it.
Here’s a reason to not do that.
Getting better requires intentionally putting yourself in situations that test your skills. Tough casts are a way to stress test your abilities. Take a few minutes to give it a go and see what happens. If you were going to pass it by anyway, what’s there to lose? Worst case is you will learn something. Consider it training for future opportunities so you can handle future challenges with confidence.
"We try to make virtues out of the faults we have no wish to correct." -Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Tom, great advice. It mirrors (not surprised) the advice I get from Dom of Troutbitten when guiding with him. He would point out a difficult cast in ‘A’ water and said that we would be casting into that tight window. What he would then have me do, that has stuck with me, is that we would work our way to that spot casting the same length and trying to achieve the same accurate placement. I still got hung up the first time (lol), but subsequent efforts have really paid off.
That is my beloved Sweetgrass bamboo rod.
https://troutwrangler.substack.com/p/the-rod-of-my-dreams-d1c
I consider a lost fly the price of my education.