Tracy&James | Wednesday, 13 May 2026
The start of the BFCC season is quite late this year, however the first event in Dodleston, Cheshire is on the horizon (on Sunday the 31st of May). I've started up my practice for the competition events, but I seem to be a little behind the curve regarding my trout distance at the moment. This is a bit frustrating as usually after an extended saltwater trip I'm casting pretty well, perhaps as you'd expect from casting almost every day for five weeks. I remember the first time I ever cast over 120ft in the #5 event at the BFCC – it was two days after Tracy and I got back from a trip to Christmas Island. Casting in the tropical winds really hones the double haul, and this is typically reflected on the casting court when it comes to distance events.
Participating in casting sport really transformed my flats fishing, I now want my trips to be very windy for a number of reasons. Firstly, and this is a very selfish one, really windy conditions tends to put off casual DiY'ers from even trying, thus the fishing pressure on the flats is reduced. On some of the rougher days my 'flat out' distance is reduced to about 45ft, I guess in these conditions many anglers wouldn't even manage to get the fly in front of themselves let alone delivered accurately to a fish. Then there's the temperature – it's really nice to have a cooling wind, especially if the wading is a little soft going making it hard work to move any distance. I think on our recent trip there were two 'calm days' where the wind dropped to below 10kmph (most days were 30 plus kmph). On both these days Tracy and I overheated and ended up wiping the sunscreen off our faces trying to clear perspiration – resulting in the kind of sunburn that we're trying to avoid by using factor 50. Another good thing about the wind is the lack of biting insects – the only times we had to be wary was when making our way through foliage and in the car on the way back to our accommodation (and when washing off the tackle in the outside garden shower in the evening).
Reassuringly my accuracy practice has been going pretty well, I guess sight fishing really sharpens this up. That said, my most common 'shot' on our trip was a backhand delivery, and I very rarely use the vertical closed-stance cast that I employ for the accuracy competition event when flats fishing as I don't want the weighted fly delivering from a height. However, despite using totally different casts, perhaps just the fact I'm shooting at targets counts as competition practice.
I've now got a couple of weeks to try and get my distance events back up to speed. I've only cast a #5 distance outfit since we've been back, so I guess I also need to find time for the #7, ST27, T38, S55 and T120. The BFCC really packs the events in on a casting day, and my target is to try to win the overall competition (taking all 7 disciplines into account). That way, if conditions turn against me in a particular session, or I cast badly with one outfit, I'm still fighting to do as well as I can in the others. Hopefully this season will see some hard fought competitions and a close championship. I should add that all BFCC competitions are open events, so you don't have to be British to win the championship – you just need to be a member which costs a meagre £20 per year (all comp entries are free for members).
The BFCC are also going to be at the Scottish and English game fairs as usual this year. A decision has been made to try and promote casting sport at the English game fair by having an invitational competition every day, where spectators can watch accomplished casters battling it out with various outfits. To this end we are looking for casters to invite – it would be fantastic to get an international entry. What is on offer is free entry to the game fair for the caster and a partner, free camping (with the BFCC team – bring drink and maybe food, but mostly drink), entry into the invitational competitions plus one entry per day into the game fair championship – this is a combined trout accuracy, trout distance and salmon overhead event. On top of all that we get to use the casting pontoons once the fair is closed for the day (midnight lumi-lines etc), plus there's carp to fish for in the lake. So a pretty fun weekend if you're a caster and all for free (ok, you have to help out with the daily comps, but that's not too strenuous). So if you are available on the weekend starting 24th of July then please drop me a message.
Hope you're having a great week,
James