8. Costing

If anyone reading this book has never learned to throw a ball he's going to find it difficult to understand this chapter on casting. For that's all casting is—just another way of throwing. Rear back with your arm, whip forward and let go.

That is the way you throw a ball and that is the way you cast your fish hook into the water with a spinning outfit.

There are a variety of ways of casting—overhead, side, or underhand; there is a time and a place for each, but there is nothing complicated about any of them.

Just as there are one or two fundamentals about throwing a ball—for example, before you can throw it you have to pick it up—so there are some fundamentals about casting. No matter if you cast overhead, sidearm or underhand, the basics are the same.

Your spinning reel—we'll assume you bought a right-handed reel with an automatic pickup bail—is hanging from your rod. Grasp the rod by putting one, two or three fingers of your right hand—depending on the size of your hand— in front of the reel leg, the other in back.

The anti-reverse lever is that little device on the left side of the reel within easy reach of your left thumb. Throw it into the "off' position. This will permit you to turn the reel either forward or backward.

Turn the reel so that the line guide—the roller on one end of the bail over which the line passes—is directly under the rod. Reach down with your right forefinger—your trigger finger—and put the fleshy tip under the line, pick it up and hold it clear of the bail. You can hold the line against the rod if you like but try not to let it ride back as far as the joint in your finger. The closer to the fingertip you can hold the line without letting go before you're ready to let the line fly free, the smoother the cast.

Back the reel cup off so that the bail is hanging down and clear of the line. Grasp the bail with the thumb and fingers of your left hand and flip it over so that it catches and holds in "cast" position.

Take a quick look-over to make sure the line isn't snagged, not anywhere around the reel, not anywhere around the rod tip, not around a guide.

You're ready now to cast.

It took a lot of words to tick off those basic pre-casting steps; it probably took what seemed like a long time to read them. But the actual doing isn't anywhere near as time-consuming as the telling. When you get your rod and reel in hand you'll perform all the steps in less time than it takes to reach down and pick up a ball.

Figure 21

The Overhead Cast

There are two ways of casting overhand. Look at the clock and it will be easier to comprehend the two schools of thought you'll run into every time you go down to the beach and see a line of surf casters in action. Twelve o'clock is the sky, nine o'clock is the sea, three o'clock is the shore.

One school makes maximum use of the whip in the rod— remember we talked about stiff and Umber rods way back in Chapter One? That is the ten o'clock to one o'clock to ten o'clock school. Graduates of this school prefer the Umber rod.

Graduates of the other school depend primarily on the strength of their body to get their hook out there. That is the three o'clock to nine o'clock school. They prefer the stiller rods. And they're probably using a revolving reel, not a spinner. Or they learned on a revolving reel and haven't changed their casting habits.

Let's look in on the first school first.

You stand facing the sea. You can be using either a sinker or an artificial lure to provide casting weight. Well say you're using a lure. Your rod tip is pointed at ten o'clock. The lure is hanging about a foot below the tip. Your right hand is grasped around the rod, fingers spanning the reel leg. Your left hand grasps the butt end of the rod; that is your fulcrum.

Now you whip the tip back to one o'clock—don't stop, don't pause, don't hesitate—and whip it right back to ten o'clock.

Ten-to-one-to-ten. Just as quick as that you do it. We can call that the two-stroke method. First stroke back, second stroke forward.

Now let's look in on the other school.

You stand at a right angle to the sea, your left side is the sea side. Your weight is on your right leg and the rod tip is at three o'clock, perhaps even between three and four. The lure hangs a foot or more below the tip. It may or may not be touching the sand.

Slowly and smoothly—smoothly all the way but speeding up as you go—you start your cast. Up overhead to twelve o'clock, down to nine o'clock. Your body swings, your weight shifts from right foot to left and all your muscle is behind the cast. We can call that the one stroke method.

There it is. That's how each school does it. Which school you decide to enroll in is up to you and the limberness of your rod. Beginners are much better off in the ten-to-one-to-ten school and, as they gain education and experience, they can vary the cycle to nine-to-twelve-to-nine to flatten their trajectory and gain more bullet like casts. But get the more lobbing ten-to-one-to-ten cycle down pat before promoting yourself to the nine-to-twelve-to-nine class.

When do you release the line? Well, when do you release a ball when you throw it? You don't know. You just uncon­sciously let go at the right time. That's the way it is with casting—you'll learn to let go at the right time. And to be right it has to be unconscious.

But here's something to guide you: Your right forefinger, the trigger finger, is bent and holding the line all through the cast. And you keep your eye on the target all through the cast, too. That means your rodtip will come back into your line of vision when it returns to ten o'clock.

Not before then do you open the trigger and let go of the line—you fire at the moment you stop the tip over the target. No earlier and no later.

If you fire too early your lure will fly up in the air; if you let go too late your lure will dive for your toes. Let go just right and your lure will go where you want it to go, just like a pitcher firing a strike into the catcher's mitt.

The Side Cast

The wind is blowing off the sea and you're trying to cast out to sea ... in other words, into the face of the wind. That can be very frustrating if all you know is the overhead cast, for an overhead cast is more like a high fly ball. And you know what happens to high flies hit into the wind.

But if you hit a line drive the ball streaks for the fences on a low trajectory and the wind is a minor factor. But you're not batting, you're pitching. So instead of using the overhead cast you use the side cast—or sidearm cast or roundhouse cast; the names mean the same. Instead of casting on a vertical plane, you cast on a horizontal plane.

If you belong to the two-stroke school, stand facing squarely out to sea, or turn a little to the right if it feels more comfortable. Twelve o'clock is your target now. Three o'clock is ninety degrees to your right. That's your trajectory.

Your back stroke is twelve to three and your forward stroke is three to twelve. But no stops, no pauses. Twelve-to-three-to-twelve. Twelve-to-three-to-twelve.

If you belong to the one-stroke school you stand at about a forty-five degree angle to the sea and you eliminate the back stroke as you did in the overhead cast. You start at three and cast to twelve. Smoothly. Slow to start, speed up as you go. Twist your body forward as you go and put plenty of snap into your wrists.

That is the side cast on nearly a ninety-degree trajectory. There's nothing to prevent you from casting at eighty degrees or seventy degrees or at fifty-eight and two-thirds. In fact, you needn't be surprised if, as you gain experience, you de­velop your own technique and find you cast best somewhere between the overhead and the sidearm, varying as conditions dictate.

The Underhand Cast

The overhead and side casts are the way to pitch your lure far onto the water, provided it's open water and provided you are not standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other fishermen.

But if you're fishing from a bridge, a causeway or a pier, you won't be fishing alone. There'll be plenty of other folks there, folks with eyes and flesh and clothes. So bridge, cause­way and pier are not places for hooks to be flying around. The same goes for barges and party boats. In those places you never should cast overhead or sidearm. In the mangrove la­goons of Florida, and in the canals you'll find in many places along the Gulf, you can't cast over your head or around from your side. The overhangs won't let you.

So you use the underhand, or flip, cast. It's safe and it won't get you into trouble with the foliage. It's also the simplest way to cast.

You stand parallel to the pier or bridge or boat rail or canal bank and you hold your rod tip straight out in front of you. Flip the tip down, whip it up again and let go with your trigger finger. Your lure will shoot straight to where you want it to go. Not as far, it's true, as with the other kinds of casts but far enough to span a canal and certainly far enough on pier, boat or causeway where you usually don't have to cast anyway—just drop your line over the side and you're in deep water.

Line Control

Now that you know how to cast you can just lean back and relax, all of you except the trigger finger. You put that forefinger to work on a new task at the split second it re­leased the line. You put it in charge of line control—call it forefinger control or trigger-finger control if you will—and you'll be amazed at how much authority and power that one finger has.

As you open it to release the line at the end of your cast, drop your extended trigger finger down almost to the lip of the spool. Your lure is flying out and the coils of line are peeling off. Lower the finger just a hair more and the coils will slap against it and the line will slow down. Lower the finger against the lip of the spool and the line will stop completely.

That's the technique of line control. It is one of the most important things you can master. Did you overcast and is your lure headed beyond your target area? Press the spool lip with your trigger finger to stop it or feather the line to slow it. Did you err in casting and is your line flying off to right or left? Put your finger to work again.

End every cast by pressing the spool lip the instant your lure hits the water. That way you'll have a taut line all the time your hook is sinking to the bottom. Don't press the spool and you'll have a bellyful of slack line; if a fish hits your lure before you retrieve the slack you're in trouble.

Line control is important, too, if you leave the anti-reverse lever off after the cast as you might if you were bottom fishing with a sinker and a fish-finder rig. The current will kick your line around—you're using the fish-finder just so your bait will have that kind of natural-seeming action—and slack will work into your line if you're not attentive. So again you put the forefinger to work.

Incidentally, always throw that anti-reverse up into the "on" position and lock it the moment a fish hits your bait.

Now you've hooked into a gamester and he's fighting to run away with your line. Your drag is set to provide a good amount of braking action, but not complete braking action because then you'd have a break, not a brake.

But the fish is taking line too fast. You want to slow him down. Okay, slow him. But don't touch your drag! Use your trigger finger. Press it against the spool, a little or a lot. Make the authority and power that's wrapped up in that finger work for you. Touch the spool to slow the fish down, take your finger off the spool to speed him up. Cup a handful of up­turned fingers over the spool if you need even more of a brake. That, Sir Sultan of the Surf, is line control!

And you use it too, and you use it fast, if you're fishing over rocks, wrecks, roots, reefs or coral. Let that fish get near those cutting edges and it's goodbye line and goodbye fish. Here again line control will save the day.

Slack Line

Slack line is the angler's bugaboo and there are only two things any fisherman can do about it. He either never lets it happen or he eliminates it swiftly when it does. You'll note that we said "when it does," not "if it does." Because slack line is inevitable unless you always do everything perfectly, and none of us is perfect.

The closest thing to perfection we know of in fishing is a good spinning reel. Mechanically, it's just about perfect. But not completely.

You'll cast and everything will seem fine and you'll begin your retrieve, unaware that a couple of coils of line came off the spool after you had completed your cast and had laid up between your reel and the large gathering guide.

Keep on winding in and you'll wind that slack right onto the reel. Each cast after that will add some more slack until there comes a cast when that big glob of accumulated slack will jump off the reel all at once. Then you're in trouble.

But all that is a simple thing to avoid. At the completion of each cast just turn the handle enough to engage the pickup. Then raise the tip of your rod. The added height will pull all the slack out of the line. Now it's safe to retrieve.

Occasionally some line will get behind the reel spool. Why it does nobody knows, not even the manufacturers. If you let it go unnoticed, you'll wind that line—another form of slack line—between the spool and the rotating head. But that, too, is a simple thing to avoid. Drop the rodtip down to a horizontal position before retrieving. The downward motion will pull the line out where it belongs.

Casting Isn't Fishing

Now that we've told you all about casting, line control and the elimination of slack line, we'll tell you something else— casting isn't fishing!

Casting is merely a means to the end. In baseball, it's not throwing the ball that wins ballgames; it's only the runs that count. So it is in fishing. Casting is fun and a good, long cast that's right on target will thrill you. Enough of those thrills can make the day worthwhile even if you don't catch any fish.

Just think back one chapter to where you read about fishing in the surf and learned that the most fertile water usually is between the high tide and the low tide lines. That can be a stretch of water just fifty or a hundred feet offshore. So we repeat: distance isn't everything.

However, if there comes a time when it is distance that counts and you can't quite get out that far, think back another couple of chapters to where you read about the imaginative qualities of fishermen. And read what R. L. Rogers, of Miami Beach, Florida, had to say in the "Life in These United States" section of Reader's Digest:

"I was surfcasting near Ormond Beach, Florida, and making some nice catches. A short distance down the beach another man was trying to fish with a freshwater casting rod and reel—with no success. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't land his bait over the sandbar. After about ten tries he picked up his tackle and went off.

"Soon he was back with the same outfit, but in place of the sinker he had attached a golf ball. He reeled off a lot of line and carefully placed it in a shoebox. Next he set a golf tee in the sand, placed the ball on the tee—took a driver and whacked ball and bait nicely over the bar. Picking up his rod and reel, he took the slack out of the line and in two minutes had a kingfish. This went on until he had five fish. Then he gathered up his gear, held up his string for me to see and left." ♦

♦Reprinted from The Reader's Digest, August 1961. Contributed by R. L. Rogers.

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