European Development and Tendencies
There have not been too many new things appearing on the flycasting stage in Central Europe in the last years. From time to time "new" casts which are already known are presented by someone else under a new name. Regardless to say, that a lot of things have already existed in other people's heads before or had perhaps already been practiced, but never been published. However, all these discussions are just a waste of time. Shouldn't we all just try to push the development of flycasting foreward regardless of the person who has found out something new? Shouldn't we -without any wrong pride- honor the work of those pioneers who have and still do develop techniques that help to make fly fishing more effective or more enjoyable? We all should try to give our students the best help to improve their skills.
In Central Europe Europe the "air casts" - as I call them- had been well analysed, perfected and published which was first of all the work of people like Charles Ritz and Hans Gebetsroither, whose casting style(oval casting - in the USA misleadingly called Belgian Cast) and theories had been slightly modified after his death by several fly casters. Roberto Pragliola from Italy has gone new ways with his fly fishing school in using special high speed techniques (TLT technique) for dry flies with very light tackle. In my opinion TLT is the most effective technique for dry fly (only for dries and tiny nymphs) fishing. Some of the "water casts" (term which I created some years ago for the different roll, Spey and switch casts) were not that well known on the continent and more or less unknown in the United States in the early nineties.
Modern Casts
A lot of these trick casts were developed by Göran Andersson from Sweden who has also developed the IMHO most effective style for two handed rods - the so called Underhand Technique - which is performed mainly with shooting heads and can be used for single hand rods, too. The Underhand Technique is more and more "misused" by spey casters who just call it modern spey casting instead of underhand casting although spey casting was a very unique and fabulous technique developed for casting the very soft(slow) and long two handed rods used at the wide Scottish Salmon rivers. This misuse of wrong terms mainly because of business reasons has lead to a lot of confusion among fly fishermen around the world. Some other techniques (Snake and Turbot Roll Casts, ...) come from U.K. and have been developed by Simon Gawesworth in the early eighties. Not to forget Michael Evans who has contributed a lot to the developement in two handed casting, too.
The flycasting instructor scenery in Europe is meanwhile very well connected through the EFFA Flycasting Instructor Programme, world's best but also toughest flycasting instructor programme and intends to develope new and better teaching methods which will help to make their flycasting classes even more efficient. The EFFA Flycasting Instructor Program is a very useful mean to make sure that only good teaching methods and techniques are used not only to keep the European fly casting level high but even improve it.
read about the US flycasting survey
