Tracy&James | Wednesday, 27 May 2026
On Sunday the BFCC hosts its first casting day of the year in Dodleston, Cheshire. The venue is just a few minutes off the main A55/A483 Chester junction, so easily accessible from the north-west or from the south. Attending will be Mark, Chris and Nick who will be available all day for casting tuition, although I'm hoping Nick can sneak off occasionally to enter the competition events also. This gives fly fishers, or those thinking about taking up fly fishing, the perfect opportunity to learn or improve their casting skills for very little outlay. We'll be there from about 9am (setting up) till about 4pm (although some addicts will probably be casting later), so you can arrive pretty much at any time and we'll still match you with an instructor.
Tracy and I will be manning the competition side of things, hopefully with some help from other competitors now we've lost Chris and Nick over to the instructional side of things. We've been out practising this week, along with the usual trout distance, we pulled out the T38 and S55 outfits. We didn't actually measure any casts, instead we purely concentrated on technique. The T38 is Tracy's least favourite event, but I'm hopeful this year might see her come to appreciate it, rather than view it as an event to get out of the way. It's actually the only women's BFCC record that she doesn't hold, and she'd like to achieve the full-house. That said, she's going to have to cast over 50m (165ft) to beat the record, so it's going to take a fantastic cast. She has beaten that mark in practice, however on BFCC days she somehow usually manages to cast the ST27 further than the T38.
For S55 practice we both just concentrated on achieving a great back-cast. If the back-cast is good then I'm of the opinion that the forward-cast pretty much looks after itself, so long as you don't do anything horrendous with the tracking. We didn't practice the T120, but I cast this pretty much the same as I cast the S55, perhaps with a slight trajectory adjustment.
I'm really not sure where my distance casting is this year, as I've been practising in some pretty tough conditions where 120ft has been a bit of a struggle. However, I'll know by Sunday evening when I've cast against the other competition entrants in the same weather.
We've also been to the river Dee this week. We both had a pretty successful day landing a number of very pretty brown trout, plus the odd out of season grayling. Although we mostly persevered with dries, the amount of tree blossom on the surface made this frustrating in places. I did swap to heavy nymphs in one particular stretch with immediate success, however I soon switched back to dries when I could. Next trip to the river will be with Chris and Nick who are staying over with us prior to the BFCC day, so hopefully the weather gods will be kind. Given the heatwave we're currently having, I can't see the level being anything other than low – the river is already on it's mid-summer height.
Hope you're having a great week,
James