Underhand fine-tuning with Göran Andersson

Since 1978 when I started fly fishing in I never took any fly casting lessons. However this year, with 46 years of age, being an internationally well known EFFA Master instructor who has taught the elite of European fly casters and fly fishers around the world …   the correct use of  single hand rods I decided to change this this year. I wanted to improve my doublehand technique. My first salmon rod I bought when I was around twenty years of age and since that time I have spent many years on improving my technique especially after getting in contact with the underhand technique in the nineties.

My aim was to learn more on underhand fly casting from the person I admire most in the fly fishing scene - Göran Andersson. Göran has influenced fly fishing around the world by inventing such important things like the first large arbor reel, the shooting heads, as well as new rod actions. Although Göran and I have fished together for many weeks in summer 2005 we only focused on fly fishing at that time as we are somehow both fly fishing adicts who love to fish and talk and share our ideas about it. But when we were working together on the Underhand part of the EFFA Doublehand Flycasting Instructor Certification Programme I felt the strong desire to let Göran fine-tune my Underhand Technique.  

So I in June this year I travelled to his home town Björbo to stay for five days of private teaching with the aim to making my Underhand Technique pretty perfect. As all instructors know if you are already casting on a high level the little bad habits in Fly casting are quite difficult to change. But Göran was patient with me and besides the teaching and analysing we both enjoyed especially the night long discussions during which we were diving deep into the physics of fly casting which is only possible if both understand what they are talking about. That’s instructors heaven. Sometimes we used different wording but finally we always met at a common point.

After these days I was very happy with my casting and so was Göran. He finally accepted me as an Underhand Instructor according to the EFFA standards and more than that also as an Underhand examiner. This makes me proud and means a lot to me as Göran is with no doubt the most respected person in double handed fly casting in the world. This instructor training will also be of great value for my future Underhand  students. Thanks a lot Göran and thanks to E.lina for taking many nice pictures of our happening! Some of them you will find on this page.