I dunno...if casting is so unimportant, why is so much effort put into the importance of casting? Does the fly magically transport itself from your box to the fishes target window?
My pops always says its a lot easier to do it right the first time than go back and fix it later. If you make the right cast for the situation, seems to me a lot better than spending much of the swing compensating or fixing it.
If you only effectively cast 40' to get efficient accuracy and turnover...best to stick to 40' when fishing and stop trying to hit 60' and fix each swing. Rivers are often more bountiful this way. Then you can start to learn how to fish the pools described in the first blog post.
If you think you can mend yourself out of a poor casting, please challenge yourself to fishing hitched wets. You will very quickly learn how much water is being wasted by simply NOT getting the fly to land on a taught leader. Think you are exempt from this when fishing a wet on a floater or sink tips? Wonder why the thread from a month or so back showed so many being far more successful on the last half of their swing and not the first half?
All things being equal, having seen this for nearly 2 decades on my favorite river, where we are all pretty much fishing the same pools days after day. What is the one constant to the few (the 10%) that are catching fish from these very same pools vs. those that go without? Luck? Holding one's mouth just right? Nearly always the better the caster the more fish they pluck from these heavily fished pools. Its almost like magic how a pool that was empty of fish the last three hours suddenly gives up 2 or 3. Right in the middle of the day after the dawn patrol just pounded the pool to death and had one half assed grab. Same floating line. Same general presentation. Hmm...
Well, dang!
