Reconciling Lefty Kreh
Many anglers are familiar the Lefty Kreh flycasting mantra: “Keep your elbow on a shelf”. This refers to a pushing and pulling movement of the arm where the elbow stays at the same height throughout the casting stroke. My own teaching of “raising and lowering the elbow” through the stroke—where the elbow never stays at the same height—appears to be in direct contradiction to Lefty’s advice. And so here’s a question I field all the time: Why did Lefty say “keep your elbow on a shelf” and you say “raise and lower the elbow?” Who’s right? Well, as it turns out, we’re recommending the same thing. Let me explain.
When I say the elbow should move up and down, that’s for casts done in the vertical or near-vertical plane. If you were to watch old footage of Lefty casting, he used this up and down elbow movement. These mechanics can be seen in various videos I’ve posted on my website and YouTube channel, though I can’t currently locate the video of Lefty. The finest fly casters in the world all share this same basic movement pattern. It is not a “style” or a “method”; it is simply sound fundamentals. These fundamentals are employed by expert casters at every distance, in any fishing situation, anywhere in the world.
The apparent discrepancy arises when we start casting off-vertical, particularly when the rod is angled from between, say, 45 degrees to 90 degrees (parallel with the ground). As we change the rod angle, the elbow movement changes. It’s “up and down” in the vertical plane, “up and out, down and in” at 45 degrees, and “out and in” at 90 degrees. In other words, when casting with the rod near parallel to the ground, which is something Lefty demonstrated a lot (especially when he cast longer or with saltwater equipment) his elbow was moving horizontally—when viewed from the side. Hence his mantra, “keep your elbow on a shelf”. A completely apt description and excellent advice.
But if you watched Lefty cast from directly overhead, you would have seen his elbow move away from his body on the backcast, and back to his body on the forward stroke (the “out and in” as I put it above). This is exactly the same elbow movement I teach and describe in all my writings, executed in a different plane. It’s that simple. So efficient mechanics dictate that our elbow movement constantly changes as the rod plane changes, and perspective is everything—the elbow can appear to be doing different things depending on your viewpoint, even as the mechanics remain fundamentally the same. (Proper elbow movement is essential to setting the line’s trajectory and aids greatly in preventing tailing loops and wind knots.)
Lefty Kreh was a superb caster with efficient mechanics, just like the great casters of today. Those mechanics might appear to be different depending on our viewpoint, but they are not. (See this video for a demonstration: Efficient Fly Casting Mechanics Various Angles.)