Michael Rebholz is a forestry scientist from Ireland by way of Germany's Black Forest, and he's spent the last several years picking a very specific fight with fly casting orthodoxy: the "loop." His argument, laid out to Christian on the Fly Fishing Insider Podcast, isn't just academic — it comes with a set of genuinely useful practice drills for anyone who wants a more consistent cast.

The Loop Is a Two-Dimensional Word for a Physical Process

Rebholz's central claim: a fly cast isn't a loop, it's a mix of waves traveling through the rod and line — the same physics as sound waves, torsional waves, and pulse waves. A "loop" describes a snapshot of a cast at one instant, but the loop itself doesn't exist for more than a moment; it unrolls and disappears as the cast progresses. His evidence is something every angler has actually experienced: a bad caster's rod makes noise. That noise is energy leaving the system as a sound wave instead of going into moving the line — a properly loaded cast is close to silent. Understanding your cast as an energy transfer rather than a shape you're trying to draw in the air is, in his view, a faster way to actually fix casting faults, because you can hear a mistake happening in real time instead of only seeing it after the fact.

Practice on the Worst Days, Not the Best Ones

One piece of advice worth adopting immediately: practice casting on windy days, not calm ones. Wind exposes every inefficiency in a cast that calm air will forgive, and Rebholz argues it's the fastest way to find out whether your stroke actually holds up under real fishing conditions — particularly if you fish salt water at all. He also recommends deliberately practicing casting mistakes on purpose — tailing loops, wide loops, and other faults you'd never intentionally throw while fishing — so that when one shows up on the water uninvited, you recognize it instantly and know exactly which single adjustment fixes it, rather than guessing.

Three Drills That Don't Require a New Casting Stroke

None of these require relearning your cast, just paying attention differently:

Cast for silence. Spend ten minutes trying to make your cast as quiet as possible, ignoring loop shape entirely. Rebholz says most anglers are shocked at how little force an efficient cast actually requires once they stop listening for anything else.

Cast underpowered on purpose. Try to throw a cast that's deliberately too weak to fully unroll. Most anglers, in his experience, are overpowering every cast by a wide margin, and this drill is the fastest way to feel where your actual minimum effort is.

Film yourself, then get a second opinion. Rebholz films his own casting constantly and recommends every angler do the same — and then take it to a casting instructor and ask for honest, specific feedback rather than general encouragement. Self-diagnosis only goes so far.

A Spey Variant Worth Knowing: "Bonkers Spey"

Rebholz also developed a slowed-down Spey repositioning method he calls "Bonkers Spey," built around draping the line over the rod blank and letting it reposition close to the angler rather than out toward the fly. The appeal isn't speed — it's control: because everything happens before the rod is loaded, a bad anchor is obvious before you commit to the forward stroke, so you can simply reset instead of throwing a cast you already know is wrong. It's a technique worth looking up on its own, but the underlying habit — recognizing a bad setup before you cast, not after — is useful no matter what style of cast you throw.

Gear

If casting fundamentals are on your list this season, our Tips and Tricks for Fly Fishing eBook covers practical, on-the-water adjustments that pair well with the drills above.