I'm kinda proud to announce that I can now shoot line consistently on my BC. Not much, 4-6 feet or so, but it works.
My training schedule was also bit interrupted by going fishing (reservoir).
Now that is great news! "Only" 4 to 6 feet is waaay better than slack in the line at the start of the forward cast. And you haven't lost sight of the main goal - fishing itself!
One consistent theme with all the casting suggestions here is that each deals with specific single things. I think it's important to work on only one part of the cast at a time. If you try to think of everything at once - you may wind up more confused than before.
Marc brought up pantomiming. That is a really good way to direct all your focus on one aspect of the cast without distractions. A lot of professionals in all sports use this technique - not only for their students - but for themselves too because it works. Watch a tennis match or golf tournament (Golf only if you are already bored comatose) sometime and notice how many pros pantomime or re-enact a stroke after hitting a ball out of play.
Just try this sequence one time – in fact you can start now. Extend your casting arm forward to where you would normally start a backcast and accelerate your forearm to a hard stop while watching your casting hand. Do this a number of times, increasing your stroke length and acceleration on each “backcast”.
You will notice that your entire forearm will bounce forward after the stop and there is nothing you can do about it no matter how hard you should try. In fact, the more acceleration you use, and the quicker your stop is, the more your forearm will bounce back.
Next, grab just the bottom section of your rod and do the same exercise. This time watch the end of the rod section. You will see that it, too, will bounce forward and if you leave it there, it may well be pointed too vertically for a good forward cast.
This is why we “drift” the rod tip back and down- to be able to execute a good forward cast. By drifting back, we now have enough stroke length and casting arc available for us to do so.
If you go outside and do the same backcasting exercises with the line on the rod while false casting, you will probably feel the rod “counterflex” after the stop, because you will now be executing a very abrupt stop after the pantomime exercises. Once you start feeling this, you may start “automatically” relaxing your grip in anticipation of the "counterllex" just before the start of your "drift".
As Paul meant to say “Don’t worry too much about waves in the rod leg”. It’s the fly leg that is most important
Cheers,
Jim
