Tracy&James | Sunday, 17 September 2023
Last weekend James and I were at the Welsh Game Fair near Bangor helping to run the fly casting competitions. We had a good number of entrants for the Daily and Overall events and had lots of prizes to present on the Sunday. We ended up changing the men's overall comp into an open event so that I could compete as there were no female entrants. I thought I would just make up the numbers and hoped to qualify with some of the male entrants. James had qualified at the Scottish GF with a young Scottish lad called Robert and Steve P had qualified at Ragley so they helped to run the qualifications for the Welsh entrants and supported running the junior comp. We had three juniors from the two other GFs who had come to Wales to compete but sadly we didn't have any junior entrants at the Welsh GF.
By midday on Sunday we had completed the qualifications and James entered the results into his spreadsheet. The Overall competition involved casting three events – trout distance, trout accuracy and salmon overhead distance – where the results were turned into percentages (of the highest distance, or score in the case of accuracy) and then added. Apparently I came first in the open overall comp so qualified for the final along with two male entrants. I was really pleased.
We ran the final with the juniors competing first then the seniors; casting distance on the water and the accuracy on the grass. Jack from Scotland won the junior overall and James won the senior/open category, followed by Steve and then me. So James won a lovely trophy, and the juniors all got tackle prizes donated by a sponsor. We had a great time running all the events at the three Game Fairs and much appreciated all the support we had from everyone who helped, including the families of the competitors. We're hoping that this competition will grow in the coming years, but that depends on casters coming out to compete though.
On Sunday (today) we will be competing in a virtual comp run by the Australian Geelong Overrunners club. The outfits to be cast are T120, T38 and #5 trout distance. James and I are looking forward to trying out a new 5# Celestial fly line. This line has a slightly longer head than the MED at 73ft and in our opinion casts further.
We only have one more live casting event this year, on the 1stOctober in Essex. It should be a great international competition as Bart is coming over with some other casters and Jose from Spain is thinking about coming. The BFCC 2023 Championship looks like it will be between Bart and James, with Bart currently having a narrow lead.
Following this event we will be off to the Bahamas for a month of bonefishing. James has been busy tying flies to replace the ones lost on our last trip. Actually, he's already tied enough to replenish the empty spaces in the fly boxes, but I'm sure he won't stop there.
Cheers
Tracy