jc53 made a good point that I neglected to mention - the backswing.
The cast with a baitcaster is a whole different thing than on a spinning reel.
The trick I found to casting relatively consistently is to let around 6" of line plus the lure dangle from the tip of the rod. If you point the tip of the rod directly away from you, you should be holding the rod and reel so that the open face of the reel (spool side) is sideways, your hand should be palm down with your thumb directly out to the side. More than anything, this allows your wrist a greater range of motion as you bring the rod back and then follow through.
There is not as much of a snap in the wrist as much as a smooth follow through as you bring the casting hand back, bend the wrist (like a free throw in basketball), then initiate the cast by rotating your forearm forward at the elbow, then following through forward with your wrist (again, just as you would a free throw in basketball). What this motion does is make sure that the lure travels like a pendulum, using centrifugal motion to keep the lure pulling consistently on the line, and the line taut. You then release your thumb (you should have pressed the butten and been thumbing the spool during all of this) just before the end of your casting motion. This initiates the rotation of the spool to accelerate in sync with the acceleration of the lure, and avoids the loss of energy caused by the slack line using the slingshot effect.
The trick to remember is to try and keep the line taut at all times during the cast. At least that is what has worked for me. I hope that helped, although it may have just confused. Please let me know and I can try to explain it more clearly.
All right, so let me tell you how it went. Today was my first day going out fishing , well, I would not actually call it going fishing, rather going to practice (bait) casting. Accent was on practicing and getting out and catching something was secondary goal.Went to Asbridges Bay. All in all I am not discouraged and not disapointed. All this inputs from you (and others helped), but I was also lucky in a way that there was an older fisherman out there who showed me firsts hand what to do too.
First 10-20 casts I did surprisingly well, no backlash and decent distance so it was surprise to me too. But then, I guess I started getting ahead of myself, I started thinking - no problem "I got this thing down" - well no so fast.
As soon as I "lowered my guard down", if I did not pay enough attention or not concentrating enough - I would make mistake and cause backlash, mostly easily manageable ones but few bad ones too. So if I adjust reel properly and apply some magnetic brakes - I usually do not have much problems with it, the only thing is - whenever I tried to cast with reel in position "free spool" - it never worked for me and I would get backlash every time
All in all, I am satisfied and decided that I am going to keep my new baitcasting reel and rod, will keep practicing to be better at it. Using baitcasting reel is kind of fun too.
