The Physics of Casting

January 8, 2013 By: Erin Block

While fly fishing is often lauded as an art, fly casting is without doubt a science. And in an issue of Discover magazine, Curtis Rist talks to the legendary Joan Wulff, physicist Jeff Kommers, and mechanical engineers Graig Spolek and Noel Perkins, about what’s involved in the physics of casting a fly rod.  “Who cares about finding a unified theory of the universe?” Spolek says, “What we need is a unified theory of fly-fishing.”