Spey cast Ogii Lake in review

Upon reviewing my video a year back when casting in Ogii lake Mongolia, I easily caught my own mistakes. In my forehand cast, my anchor point was too far out resulting in a shallow D-loop formation. Bringing the anchor point nearer would have resulted in a much better cast with a deeper D-loop. The sweep following the Perry poke looks OK as my rod tip tracks on a horizontal plane but at the end of the sweep, I made the mistake of dipping the rod tip (slightly) during the transition to forward stroke.

Spey Casting Ogii Lake, Mongolia

Helping friends with their spey cast, I now know that this dipping/downward motion of the rod tip at the end of the sweep is not a good habit to have as it tends to drive the bottom leg of the D-loop down towards water, adding unnecessary stiction/anchor to the cast . This appears to be a very common mistake to new "speyers" as their natural instinct tells them to open up their casting arc in preparation for the forward stroke.

By analyzing video footage of good skagit caster and experimentation, I soon realized that the rod tip should track an upward spiral motion during the transition from sweep to forward stroke. The smooth execution of this upward spiral motion of the rod tip during the transition stage is important as we are changing casting plane from a sweep (rod tip tracking a horizontal plane) to a forward cast (rod tip tracking a vertical/off-vertical plane). When this transition is executed smoothly, all the rod loading that is generated during the sweep is carried over to the forward cast. What this does is to pre-load the rod even before the forward cast starts. All that is needed after this is to power the rod forward with a lower hand pull followed by a high stop and good tight loop will sail out.....my AHA moment.....:)