Tracy&James | Wednesday, 15 October 2025
James and I are preparing to fly to France tomorrow (or today when you are reading this) as we have been invited by the Fly Casting Lab to compete in two fly casting competitions at the Argentat Fly Fishing show. The first is indoors to music and the second outside over grass. We're spending a couple of days first touring that area of France and it looks as if we'll be lucky with the weather. We visited the show last year and we're looking forward to revisiting the area.
Over the last weekend, we were invited to the GAIA Annual meeting in the grounds of Chatsworth House to do a demo about the BFCC and the benefits for instructors who attend the meetings. We also covered the 7 competition events and James gave advice about distance casting. We set up the accuracy targets and several instructors competed, a couple of them using an old cane rod. It was good for the accuracy but a little 'heavy' to use for the whole four rounds. Obviously James and I had a few casts too. We demonstrated casting with shooting head and trout outfits. Steve Parkes joined us and cast double handed rods providing advice on distance techniques and chatted about his Celestial fly lines. It was lovely to see some of the instructors we already knew and meet several more. Chris Avery also joined us to engage others for advice on his imminent CI assessment.
The hospitality provided by GAIA was fantastic and James and I would happily support them again at future events. We are also grateful for the suggestions for support offered for future BFCC Meetings. I'll start working on the BFCC calendar after we get back home from France.
It's been a busy time for us over the last month as we've also just held the last BFCC Meeting of 2025 where we had a shoot-out for the British Championship. We also held the inaugural Senior British Championship (for ages 65 and over). Both were hard fought and the results were close. On the day, Ross Bannerman was leading after the first four events, then James and John Reynolds took the lead in the latter three events. When I entered all the results into the spreadsheet, James won the overall, with John second and Ross third. Hence James was crowned the BFCC British Champ for 2025. Although John had an amazing competition on the day and he wasn't able to overcome Mike Heritage's leading score built up during previous events, thus Mike was crowned the inaugural BFCC Senior British Champ, with John a close second. Well done to everyone who competed and especially to James and Mike. It was maybe the last time that Mike will compete as he has mentioned that he is retiring from casting as he wants to focus on bird watching – for those who know Mike, he does actually mean the feathered kind.
Whatever you are doing this week, enjoy.
Cheers
Tracy