Tracy&James | Thursday, 22 February 2018
This weekend James and I will be visiting Ragley Hall in Warwickshire to recce the venue of this summer’s Game Fair. The BFCC have again been invited to support the show by organising the fly casting competitions. It’s fantastic that the Game Fair are backing casting sport and hopefully we’ll have a high quality entry in the lead up to the World Championships in Cumbria, just a few weeks later. We had a great weekend at Ragley Hall in 2016, so if you are interested in joining us please get in touch with me.
This year the BFCC have had a specific request to put on accuracy competition, as such we intend running a weekend long competition to the same rules as the World Championships i.e. casting at set of four bullseye targets (although it may be on grass rather than water). Whoever scores the highest (in the women’s, men’s and junior’s categories) over the course of the three days will get a prize. We don’t know what these will be yet but we’re hoping to get a sponsor on board who will supply something special.
Keeping with the World Championship theme we’re thinking of making the ‘trout distance’ championship event into a #5 weight (MED) line/9ft rod competition (last year’s was a 10ft #7 weight). We’ll compromise a bit on the stiffness of the rod though as I don’t suppose something marked as a #10 will go down well with everyone (all use the same outfit in this event). We will however keep the daily ‘trout distance’ competition to a #7 outfit for anyone who isn’t entering the Championship to cast. The daily events (also S55g and Spey) will run each day with prizes awarded to the furthest distance cast that day (for the men’s, women’s and junior’s categories). Again suggestions for sponsors who could provide prizes are welcome.
The rules to the championship ST27 and Salmon Overhead (S55g) will remain the same as previous years as these are already aligned with the WC ones. As with the trout distance, the outfits for both these will be supplied.
Finally there will also be the championship Spey competition – from a platform with a 30 degree angle change. This always gives a spectacular culmination to the fly casting at the Game Fair.
So three daily events, four championship events and an accuracy events to run; however, as previously stated - in order to achieve this we desperately need volunteers to help run all the events.
This weekend as we’ll be continuing up to North Wales, we intend to spend a bit of time river fishing at Corwen; hopefully the cold snap won’t hinder the grayling biting.
Whatever you are doing this weekend, have a great time,
Tracy.