Quantitative understanding of the fly casting stroke through measurements and robotic casting

A stumbling point for many learning to fly fish is being able to fly cast well enough to ‘present’ a fly to a feeding fish. Even among more skilled fly fishers, learning to fly cast better is often a bottleneck towards advancement in the sport. Fly casting instruction today relies on the visual inspection of the fly casting stroke and the resulting ‘loop’ of fly line. These qualitative visual cues help fly casting instructors spot the strengths and weakness in a student’s casting stroke. We introduce two novel technologies for fly casting instruction that result in aquantitative understanding of the fly casting stroke. In particular, we describe a novel robot that is able to replicate standard overhead casts. This achievement is made possible by measuring the casting stroke using a small (MEMS) rate gyro to record the angular velocity of the fly rod in the casting plane. The robot is then programmed to replicate this angular velocity history. Potential uses of this robot include an objective means to assess fly rod, fly line and leader designs, as well as new methods for fly casting instruction.