Rod Bend During Cast

So, how deeply does a fly rod bend during a cast?

A couple of days ago, I would have had no idea how to answer that question. I learned how to see it this weekend.

Macauley Lord, lead instructor at LL Bean's fly fishing schools, was the featured speaker at an advanced casting class for instructors this weekend. He talked about using video to help improve your casting.

There are multiple apps for your smart phone that pretty cool. One of them is Ubersense. With it you can record a cast and review it in slow motion or even frame by frame. It's pretty amazing how much you can learn by watching yourself cast. Using a phone or tablet to record and watch a cast is quickly and easily done.

Here's my answer to my question (more or less). We messed up the focus, so the image is poor, but I thought that this is an interesting image that shows how deep a rod is bent during a 75 foot cast. This is screen shot of an Ubersense video image. The rod is a TFO Axiom 7 wt., the timing of the image is before the forward cast stop, you can see that the handle has started rotating, and the left hand is about halfway through the haul.

I was surprised by how much the rod bends and how close to the handle it is bending. A couple of frames before this image the bend is almost touching the handle, but the top 1/3 of the rod is still straight at that point.

Very cool, Rex. Thanks for sharing the benefit of your learning.