The art of false casting...

      For those of you reading this that do not fly-fish, the false cast is what the fly angler does to lengthen the amount of line at play. That is, it is what most people envision when they think of fly-fishing. It is the image of the angler, standing knee-deep in a river, with a loop of line whistling over his head that conjures the romantic image associated with fly-fishing. Besides the fact that this often looks very impressive, the false cast also has a very real purpose. As I stated before, it lengthens the angler's line, thereby increasing the range of the cast. It also helps the angler to place their fly on-target, achieving the the goal of a perfectly placed cast, and hopefully rewarding the angler with a well-earned bounty.

      The true fact of the matter is that it is nearly impossible to truly master the art of casting without first mastering the art of the false-cast. If an angler fails to false-cast enough, they will undershoot their target, too much, and they'll overshoot. Often, even after false-casting to the proper distance, the cast will land off target, and the angler will immediately raise the line out of the water and begin to false-cast again, changing and adjusting it ever so slightly in order to make the next cast perfect.

      In our own daily lives, whether we are anglers or not, we're all making “false casts” without ever realizing it. Working toward our own personal goals and aspirations requires us to be constantly false casting and making miscalculations in order to make our next cast just a little more perfect than the last. We are forever adjusting our efforts to avoid making recurring mistakes. Only after countless misplaced casts, readjustments, and improvements, can we really make our casts fully count.

      Often our false-casts may begin to feel redundant, causing fatigue and frustration. At times, we may not know how to adjust our casts so that they fall perfectly in the next attempt, and the only viable option is to continue to false cast until we have perfected it. If we are to fully appreciate the casts we make in our lives, we must learn to appreciate the art of the false cast. At the times when we begin to feel as though we have expended every ounce of energy and have exhausted our efforts in the hopes of perfecting our casts, if we simply lay our line onto the water once more, we'll often see our goal become reality. For every precise cast we make, we may have to false cast a hundred times, but the one cast that falls exactly where we want it to will cause all the false casts to become nothing more than stepping stones that got us to our goals. Then, and only then, will our casts become worthwhile. All of our fatigue disappears, our frustrations vanish, and the rewards of our efforts will be seen through the perfection we've achieved.