The Masked Fly Fisher (English Subtitles) / The secret of the under hand cast

(English Subtitles) This video introduces the underhand casting technique used by a Japanese ”Grandpa" known as “YouTube @ Loop Juggler” while fly fishing in a river. Loop Juggler/Grandpa is unusual by all means. Extremely unusual. To begin with, a nickname like “Loop Juggler” is way too suspicious. If he wanted to hide his identity, I wish he’d gone with a low-key name like Clark Kent (lol).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aulmvK_GWFI
*日本の皆様へ　これは先日アップした「仮面の下には」の英語バージョンです。「仮面の下では」は音声の不具合で日本語の字幕をつけている都合上、英語の字幕がつけられなかったため、別動画にしました。今後は日本語版と英語版を一つの動画に統合していく予定です。今回はもう一度ご覧になりたい方以外はスキップしてくださいね！　
It’s been a long time since we started calling the “age of diversity” and the “age of individuality,” yet Japanese society still has a deep-rooted tendency to value conformity over individuality.
This Japanese agricultural cultural mindset has been passed down through the generations, even in fly fishing. If someone says, “From now on, it’s barbless,” the vast majority of fly fishers will suddenly start using barbless hooks. If someone starts touting the advantages of long tippets, everyone and their dog will start using them.

Because agricultural societies are closed-off, communication is tight-knit, and trends spread like wildfire. Juggler, however, has not a shred of such uniformity.
He likely doesn’t own a single piece of Patagonia gear—a favorite among fly fishermen world wide—and the rods he uses are from brands I’ve never even tried. Above all, the fact that he specializes almost exclusively in the underhand cast, and primarily uses a single-handed rod, is exceptionally unusual within the Japanese fly fishing community.

The underhand cast is a method pioneered by Sweden’s Goran Andersson, also known as the Scandinavian cast. It all began when Anderson cut up existing silk lines to fish spots overhung by trees. This original shooting head system naturally used lines with a completely different structure from the traditional lines of the time and required a different casting technique. This new trend crossed over to the United States, where it evolved into the Skagit cast, primarily used for targeting steelhead.

The Skagit cast can be performed with either a single-handed or double-handed rod. While there is no doubt that the underhand cast was invented by Goran Andersson, it did not emerge from nothing; rather, it evolved from the traditional Spey cast that existed prior to it. Japan, a relatively new country in the world of fly fishing, has followed a different evolutionary path from the West due to differences in target fish and environments.

Unlike in Europe and the United States, where salmon fishing is popular, salmon fishing in rivers has generally been prohibited in Japan. After a small number of anglers continued to use the Spey cast in the rivers of Honshu where cherry salmon (Sakuramasu) run, the double-handed rod began to gain popularity as a system that allowed anglers to easily cover distance in lakes. It was only then that the underhand and Skagit casts finally began to spread.

Judging by his YouTube videos, even though Loop Jugglers uses the underhand cast, they tend to use single-handed rods more often than double-handed ones. In other words, as Japanese fly fisher, they are among the rarest practitioners of this fishing style, with the smallest number of adherents.