Tracy&James | Thursday, 5 March 2020
Tracy and I don’t seem to be having much luck with the weather for fishing lately. We’re currently in North Wales and yet again the rivers are blown out until at least the weekend, at which point we’ll be making our way back down south.
At least next Sunday we have the first BFCC event of the year to look forward to, in Cullompton, Devon. We’ve been doing some off and on (weather permitting) practice for this which, for me, has shown that my tennis elbow condition, that flared up about a year ago, has still not resolved itself. I’ve been in pain since I got carried away casting the S55 salmon outfit a while back – it was flying great that day and I obviously over-did things. I suspect I’m going to have to be very careful for the rest of the year.
I usually set myself some personal casting targets for the BFCC season, and this year is no different – I have them written on a post-it note stuck to the laptop I’m writing this on. However, as things stand with my elbow right now I think most of these are extremely ambitious to say the least, but I guess time will tell.
I’m just back from a business trip, travelling through a number of international airports. I’m glad to report that the irrational response to the Covid-19 virus has yet to filter through to the officials operating the airports, customs and immigration etc. that I passed through, but I’m sure it’s coming. There were some funny precautions taken by individuals though that kept me amused during my wait times. The best were the ones who insisted on wearing builder’s dust masks – I thought better of asking any of them what they thought such apparel would do against a 10 nanometre virus when I could poke my finger down the gap at the side of their face.
There’s a saying that’s been attributed to Einstein* that goes – “there are two things that are infinite; the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not certain about the universe”.
*Note – I didn’t say ‘this is a quote from Einstein’ as I spent a little time looking into whether he said it or not and I didn’t come up with anything concrete. So it could have been him or he could have said something similar. Maybe it was someone else entirely. However, the point is that I’ve made the effort to spend two minutes to do some basic fact checking, I feel if more people did this the online world would be a much better place and perhaps people would see the futility in purchasing a dust mask to fend off a nano-scale virus.
Anyway, back to casting; if you can get over to Devon on Sunday we’ll have some of the best casting instructors in the country on hand to sort out anything from a tailing loop issue through to how to progress towards a casting certification if you want to. They’ll also be 7 competition events if you’re that way inclined, you can enter any of these you wish ranging from accuracy where the longest cast is short of 50 feet through to the monstrous T120 double hander where some will be hoping to cast over 200 feet. So wherever you are with your casting it’s sure to be a great day (there’s beer too).
All the best, James.