Tracy&James | Wednesday, 16 October 2024
Last Saturday saw the final BFCC day of the year (although I should point out that Tracy is thinking about organising a competition only day to part make up for the event that was cancelled due to poor weather). It's been a slightly odd year as far as attendances at the casting days, and none of the dedicated members can quite figure out why people aren't turning up in the numbers that they used to. The tuition available at a BFCC day is without doubt the best value for money you can get. For £15 you can pretty much get one-to-one tuition from a number of different MCIs for as long as you want (they do like a short break for lunch, mind you). They'll teach you whatever you want from the basic foundations through to any advanced cast that takes your fancy, so you'd expect people would be fighting for places, but no. The same goes for the casting competition side of things, the number of competitors has been significantly down on previous years. Even the chance to compete for the overall championship at the last event didn't bring out any additional casters other than Rickard, who made it over from Sweden.
This is a little bit odd as clearly there is still an appetite for competition casting as demonstrated by how busy the BFCC were at the two game-fairs of the year in Scone, Scotland and Ragley, England. However, I don't think anyone goes to these shows purely for the casting competitions any more (a number of years back they did though, and it was great – all sitting on the bank waiting, watching, chatting and drinking of course).
How we get out of this slump I'm not sure. It is the case that the game-fairs offer prizes, and good ones too, so perhaps that's the way to go. Obviously the prizes at the game-fairs are subsidised by the organiser who offers pitches at a reduced price to those funding the prize pool. This is impossible at the BFCC and offering even a mid-range prize would probably take the whole of the club's revenue for the year. So I'm looking for suggestions on how to save the grass roots of competitive casting, or do we just let it die?
Although the entry wasn't huge for the competition last weekend, it was a highly competitive event. Tracy kicked things off with a women's BFCC record in the accuracy; the practice she's been doing out of the front of our house all summer clearly paying off. Tracy had beaten me more times than I'd beaten her this year so I was happy to level the score and to beat the BFCC overall accuracy record at the same time (taking the record from TC). Frustratingly, I still had a couple of 'ones' on my score sheet, so hopefully I can do better in the future (well I can always do better until I hit a perfect score).
Rickard showed his class (world championship finalist) in the two trout distance events beating Mike Heritage into 2nd place despite Mike setting an age class record in the #5. I took additional wins in the ST27, T38 and T120 but Rickard took another win in the S55. The S55 is one of my favourite events, although I never fish with a double handed rod, and one that I think I'm pretty handy in (world championship finalist in 2022). I therefore like to think someone has cast pretty well when they beat me in that one.
Once all the results were entered into the spreadsheet it emerged that I was the overall winner, a big contribution being my winning margin in the accuracy. As such, it's my name that will be going on the trophy for the year. Hopefully next year will see more casters competing, but who knows.
This weekend Tracy and I are off to the fly fishing show in Argentat, France. Here there will be a couple of trout distance competitions that we will be entering purely as competitors (i.e. not having to do any of the organisation). One of these is indoors, that's going to be a totally new experience for both of us. We're also hoping to do some fishing on the River Dordogne and I'm sure they'll be plenty of socialising and drinking around the show also.
Have a great week,
James.