Tracy&James | Wednesday, 18 December 2024
This week has been another tough one for Tracy and myself in terms of coming up with some inspiration for writing a front page – Tracy hasn't picked a rod up at all and all I've done is flick a #5 weight about for a bit immediately in front of our house. Tracy is still struggling with her knee and that is preventing us from going Spey casting for fear that the twisting motion will make things worse. The injury was caused by casting in the first place; trying to include some trunk rotational movement must have put some stress on her knee which became sorely inflamed and is taking a long time to recover.
What hasn't helped my practice is that there have been some changes made to my usual casting pitch. This area, which usually has a relatively consistent wind (depending on the direction) is two side-by-side football pitches. As such, it didn't really matter which way the wind was blowing, I could always find a direction to cast, even with outfits that went a long way for, example the S55 where my PB stands at 256ft (78 metres) casting from one of the corner flags diagonally across to another. However, in the last couple of weeks they've decided to construct a metal fence around one of the pitches, to demarcate the mass of spectators from the playing surface. Sometimes they get up to 10 people watching the Sunday league games and to prevent such a throng for pitch invasions it was obviously felt that spending 5 grand on a 'leaning' bar was necessary. Now this won't effect my #5 and #7 practice at all, but it will for all the other BFCC disciplines. Therefore I'll only be able to cast the heavy stuff if the wind is now perfectly aligned either up or down the pitch that is left without the fence.
Another change that has happened recently is the closure of the fly store in the city where we live. Foxons has been a constant in my fly-fishing life, having been going for over 50 years. We would often pop in when we lived in Southern England and were back in Wales visiting our family. When we moved back permanently it was only a short walk from our house, in fact it was pretty much next door to the grocery shop where we usually get our milk and supplies. It was super handy having the best fly shop in the North West on our doorstep – as soon as I thought of something I needed I could pick it up with our groceries. It's not actually the end of Foxons however, they are relocating to a riverside location in Llangollen. I'm sure they're going to be successful there with all the fly anglers who visit to fish the River Dee.
This week I'll definitely get out and do some proper casting. I intend assessing a soft #5 rod I have for the accuracy event – it certainly feels nice when doing 'intricate' casts so I'll see how I perform with it when casting at hoops (or more likely cones). If the wind moves to the right direction then I may get to do some distance practice on my usual pitch, and if Tracy's knee recovers sufficiently we may take a drive out to go Spey casting. I'm also a week closer to breaking out my fly tying kit – I haven't managed to get over that hump just yet, but when I do there's going to be a glut of bonefish flies produced.
Have a great week, James.