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Article By Thomas R. Dempsey,\u00a0M.D. CCI<\/em><\/p>\n The mere mentioning of the casting with both hands sends chill bumps up and down the spine of most anglers.\u00a0 The initial response is \u201cI can\u2019t do that.\u201d\u00a0 My answer to that question is \u201cYes, you can if you try.\u201d<\/p>\n For the last several years, Gulf Coast Fly Fishing School has worked with all of their students to learn to cast with the non-dominant hand.\u00a0 It sounds like a monumental task, after all how would we react if someone told us we would have to learn to write with our non-dominant hand or, as a surgeon, operate with our non-dominant hand.<\/p>\n Actually, casting with the non-dominant hand makes practical sense to the dedicated angler.\u00a0 For example, if the wind is blowing into your right side, and you are a right-handed caster, then the challenge is keeping the fly away from our head.\u00a0 This can be accomplished by changing our rod plane to a more horizontal cast, casting over the opposite shoulder in a cross-body cast, or casting back-handed on the opposite side.\u00a0 All of these casts have significant limitations.<\/p>\n The horizontal cast is prone to tick and is not extremely accurate. The off shoulder cast across body limits the amount of translation we can make therefore it limits the distance we can cast.\u00a0 And practically most students do not execute it correctly.\u00a0 The body serves as a body block on our back cast limiting significantly the length of our casting stroke.\u00a0 Casting backhanded is unreliable and inaccurate in the hands of most anglers.\u00a0 So, it makes perfect sense to use the other hand.<\/p>\n It’s a question of training and muscle memory.\u00a0 The same muscles are present in the non-dominant as in the dominant extremity\u2026the same number of nerves and blood vessels\u2026all basically mirror the dominant side.\u00a0 All we have to do now is train our brain to perform the same actions with the fly rod that we are able to accomplish with our dominant side.<\/p>\n This can be done simply by beginning at the beginning but changing everything 180 degrees to the opposite side.\u00a0 That means if we are right-handed, our left foot is going to be back now and our right foot is going to be pointing towards our target.\u00a0 Our grip is going to be exactly the same with the thumb on top and the casting stroke is going to be the same\u2026watching the back cast, watching the forward cast, maintaining your trajectory and maintaining your casting arc and the amount of translation.<\/p>\n I would advise and encourage all of you fly fishermen to explore the concept of casting with your non-dominant side.<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][et_pb_video src=”https:\/\/gulfcoastflyfishingschool.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Casting-with-both-hands-video.mov” _builder_version=”4.6.3″ _module_preset=”default”][\/et_pb_video][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Article By Thomas R. Dempsey,\u00a0M.D. CCI The mere mentioning of the casting with both hands sends chill bumps up and down the spine of most anglers.\u00a0 The initial response is \u201cI can\u2019t do that.\u201d\u00a0 My answer to that question is \u201cYes, you can if you try.\u201d For the last several years, Gulf Coast Fly Fishing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-instruction"],"yoast_head":"\n