Tracy&James | Wednesday, 25 September 2024
The next BFCC casting day will be a one off shoot-out for the championship trophy, currently held by Bart de Zwaan from the Netherlands. Normally the BFCC championship is contested over the course of the whole year, with the casters top two results in each of the seven casting disciplines counting. As such, with every day attended, casters had the chance to improve their score. Unfortunately, due to the weather, the BFCC hasn't been able to to host a full calendar this year, plus one of the competitions we did have was very poorly attended. As such, if the normal scoring system was adhered to, then I would be in an unassailable position in the championship standings irrespective of the Bentley, Essex result. Therefore, to keep things interesting, whoever wins the last event will also be awarded the championship.
Now obviously I'm hoping this is going to be me and I've been out practising – particularly the accuracy event which, yet again, I've failed to score a single win in this year. In fact Tracy has beaten me more times than I've beaten her, so I'm really hoping to level that score at least. Unfortunately Bart can't make it over to defend his title but Rickard, a member of the Swedish fly casting team and finalist in the #5 trout distance event at the recent world championships, will be. Hopefully the chance to win the championship will encourage others to turn up also – it doesn't matter if they've never cast at the BFCC before – just turn up, pay the nominal entry fee and be in with a chance of walking off with a trophy. As usual seven events will be cast on the day: trout accuracy, #5 trout distance, #7 trout distance, ST27, S55, T38 and T120. The club has good outfits available (e.g. new MED lines for the #5 and #7, the same outfit as I use for the ST27, an outfit that I've cast over 200ft for the S55, and T38 and T120 gear that we all cast). So even if someone doesn't have all their own rods and lines, there will be tackle available to use. The percentage system as used all this year, and at the world championships, will be used to determine the overall winner. So you don't have to win every event – just don't lose by too much though.
A couple of weeks after the BFCC event Tracy and I will be travelling to Argentat in France to attend the fly fishing event organised by the FCL (fly casting lab) group of Facebook. We're both looking forward to this, probably because we don't have to do any organising other than our travel arrangements. We think there's going to be two casting competitions, one of which will be indoors. This will be entirely new to me as, apart from waggling a MPR about, I've never tried to fly cast indoors. It will be interesting to see what adjustments need to be made – I'm anticipating that getting distance is going to be very hard, I shall try and keep my swearing muted as I watch my fly leg crumple and collapse. We're hoping we might get some fishing in on this trip also, however I've already seen that some drinking has been scheduled, so we'll see.
Beyond that, we're perhaps going to look to hold a competition casting only day in Cheshire to make up for an event that was cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch. That said, if it continues raining like it has for the last few days, then it may well be waterlogged again soon.
Hopefully I'll see some of you at the BFCC Essex event, either competing for the championship or attending for the great tuition that's available all day.
Hope you're having a great week.
James.