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Learning to cast with the non-dominant hand

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Fergal

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Anyone ever accomplish this? I am right handed. I have an old injury to my thumb, it's bothered me for years but it's always been tolerable. Well, yesterday I was trying out my new CTS Affinity X 9wt (from HL - The rod is very nice). On what ended up being the last cast of my session I tore some ligaments in my thumb (I had a consult with a hand specialist today (my Father-in-law). I will need to splint it for 4-6 weeks. X-rays didn't show any fracture (it's convenient having my own equipment...). Going forward though - my days of fly casting right handed are basically done though. So either I stop flyfishing in saltwater (I'm mostly fine with that actually) or learn to do it left handed. To be honest, I'm not sure I willing to deal with that but maybe this summer I will play around and see how it goes.

 

So, anyone ever made the switch or get to the point that they were reasonably good with the off hand? If so, what helped?

 

ps - for those interested you can see the medial deviation on my right thumb (vs the left).

 

IMG_2801.JPG

ASMFC - Destroying public resources and fisheries one stock at a time since 1942.

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I did practice left had casting when my right shoulder was bad. Left hand rod casting game pretty good very fast but right hand line hauling did not. Of course I did not want to slow down right shoulder healing but it does not explain it. Later I have tried few times and it is frustrating difficult to haul using my dominant hand. You definitely should try because you might learn easier.

 

Have you tried the V-grip?

 

Perhaps you can become a double hand rod fly angler?

 

Esa

Edited by crunch
"Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once" 1939 Lee Wulff
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Agree with ESA,  TH.     I tried SH with my left and failed miserably.    Right shoulder acts up from time to time and can be painful to cast.     That's when Mikey O got me thinking about the TH rod and I haven't looked back.      Nice thing about the TH setup you can learn to cast LH, (I'm righty),  pretty quickly, or at least I did.   No comparison switching RH to LH with a two hander as opposed to a SH rod.   Literally in about a weeks time I was casting 75% the distance with my LH with the two hander.

 

HT

Currently have aphasia.    Aphasia is a result of my head stroke causing a bleed.   Happened in my Maine vacation in July (2021).   Lucky me less than 1% of people get stroke aphasia.  :(      I'm making project but have been told this is easily 5 months to 1 year for this to improve.   Until then hope you don't mind making sense with what I text.   HT

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Fourteen years ago I lost most of my right hand in an accident. I have trained myself to cast two handed rods. The left does the real work but the right does provide some support and perhaps a bit of accuracy. Personally I find the longer 12-13 foot spey type rods best. At least here, in south Texas the true spey lines turn to spaghetti  in summer so I have to use regular WF lines and overline about 3 line sizes. Thus an 8 wt spey takes an 11 wt tropic fly line. Works well for me.  I find that I can now cast a regular 9' left handed but not as far or as accurately as with two handed rods. I really don't double haul much but the longer rod makes up for it, I think. It's not a particularly long learning curve and it is frustrating at first but this way does work. So you might try it.

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TH is out. I played with that for a full season about 10 years ago. I have no desire to that. It's either SH and I learn to cast left handed or I'm done.

 

 

ASMFC - Destroying public resources and fisheries one stock at a time since 1942.

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Ever see Lefty Kreh do casting demonstrations at any of the fishing shows? Ever notice he did them all right handed? Well, he suffered a serious left shoulder injury a long time ago, and did well enough with his right arm to wow crowds for years. (He tore the biceps clean off at he shoulder helping his wife flip a mattress on a bed.)

 

Obviously, the double haul is critical for fishing in the salt. Lefyt's tip for teaching it was to get the feeling by letting the line fall behind you after dong the haul on the backcast. Just keep doing it until you have that feel. 

Same on the foreward cast. Just let the line fall to the water/lawn after the haul.

I see Simon Gawesworth has a nice demonstration of learning the double haul on the lawn that he did for Rio, and can be easily found by a Google search for "How to Double Hall Fly Fishing Video - Rio Products".

 

Once you have the feel on the forward and backward casts, only then try to put it all together with the double haul on the forward and backcasts. It takes time to develop real coordination and power, but I bet you can do it.

 

Personally though, the first place to begin to  develop the double haul is in the chair in your living room. If you can't do the haul motion on the forward and backward casts sitting in a chair with an imaginary rod, it is going to be very difficult to do it when you have a rod in hand.

 

 

(Also, don't totally give up on the two handed rod idea. Ten years ago the rods were big and heavy and Skagit lines had not been developed. I have an 11 1/2 foot Sage One Switch rod that is rated to throw 500-550 grain Skagit heads that only weighs 5 1/2 ounces. The same advances in weight reduction and strength that has occurred in single hand rods has occurred in two handed rods.)    

 

 

Edited by charliestriper
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 I destroyed my UCL ligament in my right elbow a couple years ago. I couldn't pick up a coffee cup for a month. To this day, I crank right on my reels because I can't apply vertical pressure with my right arm. I did do some left handed fishing for the better part of a year. Casting wasn't my problem, it was everything else. Line management was a big problem, and I couldn't set a hook (a right handed strip strike wasn't an option). I feel your pain, I have nothing encouraging to tell you. It's been 3-4 years for me since I did that and I'm still nowhere near 100%. Any nerve impingement?

"Talent does what it can, genius does what it has to"
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Last year I had the choice of casting left handed or not fishing. I can't say I ever got great, but I got good enough to catch fish. I really had to watch the line ALL the time. Muscle memory on the right side just makes it so you feel exactly the right time, I never got that on the left side. I had to make a few more false casts too, and stick to unweighted flies. I don't think I cracked 40' and would not opt to use it in the salt given the choice, but on a small stream in the GW Natl Forest I found it to be a pretty useful thing to be able to do. 

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It's not hard to learn to cast with the opposite hand, especially if you can use your dominant hand as the teacher. A few weeks and you'll you'll be competent. 

 

In fact, I often get intermediate casters who are having problems "breaking their wrist" and  thus opening their loops to give it a try. People are naturally less adept at using their non-dominant wrist and they end up with nice tight loops within a minute or two.

 

Learning to haul with the dominant hand will do your head in at the start though ... :)

 

Cheers,

Graeme

Edited by Hirdy

FFi Certified Casting Instructor

 

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I taught myself a few years ago. I never liked casting with my back to the water when wind was on the wrong side. I’m not great with my left hand. Guess about 50% of right hand accuracy and 70% of distance. When on the water I try to practice. Like Steve, after the cast I have to switch hands to retrieve. So far no hooks in the ear.

bill

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Drew,

 

Sorry to hear about the thumb

If you want to find a way to continue fly fishing looks like from the above you can.

If you can utilise the fingers on your right hand to hold the top grip on a TH rod then with  today’s TH rod you can stay very much in the game and at a high level.

As charliestriper  said TH rods today are not the same as ten years ago.

It may also have been your cast which was not working and caused you to drop them. That can be fixed with some lessons.

You can use a lower hand dominated cast and the left hand is good at that.

It is worth a fresh look. Herb knows about TH rods he may still have some or the blanks.

If it works for HT it can work for you.

Hope it all works out fine.

 

Mike

 

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10 hours ago, Local66 said:

 I destroyed my UCL ligament in my right elbow a couple years ago. I couldn't pick up a coffee cup for a month. To this day, I crank right on my reels because I can't apply vertical pressure with my right arm. I did do some left handed fishing for the better part of a year. Casting wasn't my problem, it was everything else. Line management was a big problem, and I couldn't set a hook (a right handed strip strike wasn't an option). I feel your pain, I have nothing encouraging to tell you. It's been 3-4 years for me since I did that and I'm still nowhere near 100%. Any nerve impingement?

With the thumb, no. But with the 2 or 3 bad discs in my neck I get a nice tingling feeling in my hand some times.

 

I did briefly mess around with the left, as a few have stating line handling was the issue. Casting stroke was what it was and didn't seem utterly hopeless. I've known that this issue was going to bite me some day. My thumb has been an problem ever since I started flyfishing. Any transition is going to be hard. I'm not trying to brag but I was a good caster right handed (out of practice lately but it was still there). Going from throwing a full line with relative ease to a monkey having a seizure - it's going to be tough and to be honest I'd probably just pick up a spinning rod.

 

The TH, I just have zero interest there. I never saw any benefit of using it vs SH(at least when I could cast as well as I could...). For what I want to do it's either a SH or a spinning rod.

 

Thanks for the replies.

 

PS - the CTS affinity X 9wt - damn nice stick.

ASMFC - Destroying public resources and fisheries one stock at a time since 1942.

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19 hours ago, crunch said:

I did practice left had casting when my right shoulder was bad. Left hand rod casting game pretty good very fast but right hand line hauling did not. Of course I did not want to slow down right shoulder healing but it does not explain it. Later I have tried few times and it is frustrating difficult to haul using my dominant hand. You definitely should try because you might learn easier.

 

Have you tried the V-grip?

 

Perhaps you can become a double hand rod fly angler?

 

Esa

I did actually try a few before i blew up my thumb. That might be an option I guess.

ASMFC - Destroying public resources and fisheries one stock at a time since 1942.

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