I couldn’t wait until tomorrow. After work this evening I went to a stream in town for about an hour. I tried the pink Vermax VLS Iso line with my typical setup. For me that means a line the length of the rod plus 1m of tippet. This is what I use 95% or more of the time. I occasionally (a few times a season) will change the line length, but it’s rare.
Today, I paired it with a Suntech Tenkara Bum 40. So that meant I had 4m of line and 1m of Trouthunter 5.5x tippet and I tied on an Ishigaki style kebari; mostly because that’s what was easily at hand. It was a beautiful evening and I had plenty of opportunity too find out if I could see the line. There was direct and bright evening sun and I had no difficulty seeing the line. Additionally, there were plenty of places with full shade and again, I had no problems seeing the line. The only really difficult place to see it when it was directly against small stones. This steam was very low and plenty of the bed was showing. I could still see it against that background, but it was harder than all the others.
The line itself is moderately shiny and very pliable. More pliable than any of the tenkara level lines I already owned. It almost had this relaxed sense to it. There was no noticeable memory to the line when taking it off the manufacturer’s spool. One thing I did seem to notice was that it did not seem to hold knots very well; then again, I only played with it for about an hour. I’ll need to make more observations.
I thought that my casting had been gradually improving, particularly this year. Then there was today. Okay, that sounds a little extreme but, the first 20 minutes or so today, definitely showed that I have plenty of room for improvement in my casting.
The main thing I observed, was that I was trying to cast the line and wasn’t letting the rod cast the line. I’m not sure if this make sense or not. The first 15 minutes of being out, I was lucky if my kebari was landing 2-3m in front of me. So, I tried changing my casting stroke to let the rod momentum move the line and not try to move it with my arm and shoulder. After another 10-15 minutes of trying this, I had a beautiful cast. The line fully unfurled and my kebari dropped on the water within a short distance of where I had intended for it to hit the water.
The cast just felt right as it was happening, so I tried to replicate what it felt like. After another 20 minutes or more, seven or eight casts of ten would nicely unfurl with the kebari gently landing on the water within a dinner plate’s diameter of where I wanted it to land.
Once I started to understand what it felt like, I was able to get my kebari to land on the water with the most delicacy that I’ve ever been able to do. I certainly do not consider myself good at this, but I do agree that nylon line certainly does elucidate your flaws in casting. I was surprised at how subtle changes in how I held the rod, how my arm was positioned, and how tense I was all dramatically improved or degraded my casting. Next is to try one of the infamous #3 nylon lines and see how much more that accentuates areas in which I need to improve and get to learn. Until tomorrow.
