Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 4 January 2025
The highlight of the year we now have left behind was the flycasting world championship. Getting there, being there and competing was a great experience with a lot of emotions.
I competed for the first time at end of May, I entered my second competition just two weeks after that one. A few days after attending the second competition I get an email from the captain of the Swedish flycasting team. “Please call me”. I got offered a spot in the Swedish team. That felt pretty damn great! I was super happy, Paul was pretty happy about it too. I’m actually not sure about which of us that was the most excited about it. That was June 11 and World Championships would be in a little more than two months, we had some work to do.
During the preparations I trained hard. I trained stupid. I managed to get some pain in my elbow. The pain was manageable by stretching, strength training and other remedies, but it did limit how much I could and dared to train. During the preparations I felt like my performance didn’t improve and it felt like it just got worse. I had a lesson with Paul just a few days before going to the worlds. In that session we got things really going again. I did find the groove again. That was a great feeling to be back on track.
The first event of the world championships was Trout Accuracy and I had been drawn to start first of everyone. A little bit nervous to be first caster of the whole championships. But at least it is not bad to start early in accuracy. First cast went great, a five. Then a one, there I started to lose my headspace a bit. From there I don’t remember what I hit but soon things really went bad. I pretty quickly lost focus because I was focusing on entirely the wrong things at the moment. The conditions did seem really good for accuracy that day so I was sure after a few bad casts that I had no shot at getting into the final. The lowest score to get into the final was 50 points, in my mind I was sure from the start that well over 60 would have been needed.
That same day I also competed in Salmon Distance. That was probably Paul’s idea rather than mine to sign up for that. I had never cast a two hander before, borrowed one right before it was my time to cast. I think I did pretty well I placed 18 out of 27 casters in this event.
The competition I really came there to cast was Trout Distance, the formula one of fly casting they say. During the qualification I had a decent first round, I was in the top eight and had a possibility to get into the final. That was a pretty good feeling. First time at worlds and might even get into the final in Trout Distance. I got knocked down when the second round started. Ok not unexpected to happen, but I also had my second round to cast. I did manage to keep my nerves under control enough to perform I casted well enough to have a shot at the final again. That was a nerv-wrecking wait, both for me, Paul and my girlfriend. There was a “live” scoreboard during the competition, but it was some delay also. My girlfriend did call to get updates on what was going on. I did chat with Paul all the time to update both about my score and his other student at the worlds also. When it was all said and done I was good enough to get a spot in the final. I placed seventh in the qualification and got one of the eight spots in the final. What a feeling! I was in the final of Trout Distance in my first World Championship. It was a total deload of feelings. I have to admit I did shed some tears of joy, or a bucket, at that moment. Paul was right I was actually pretty good at this.
On the day of the finals in the overhead events I got a bit worried when I saw one of the guys in the Norwegian team warming up. He was shooting a lot of backing. But then I saw that his line wasn’t orange. He was just casting Seatrout Distance. Got me worried there for a bit. Trout Distance was going to be casted before Seatrout so of course I thought he was warming up for Trout.
I didn’t get a very good start in the Trout Distance final. My absolutely longest cast did land just outside of my lane. I got a tangle in my running line so I did miss one cast. I was thinking about jumping into the water to fix that tangle. But this time I had a secret weapon, I had found the great guy Lasse to have at my side to help me. Lasse, you know, the guy who seems to prefer to cast two rods at the same time. Great guy, and less scary in real life than on the board. Thank you once again Lasse for helping me!
In the second round things were going better, except for the fact that I lost control of the first cast. So I put down the first cast at 26 meters, I knew that because the judge had time to get there and call it out. The next cast went to 37 meters or something. So now I had to wait for the judge to row back to score that cast. A good way to waste casting time there. I did good and came out with the series of 38.5, 38.5 and 37.5 meters as my three best casts. Not bad to hook up at least three casts in three minutes. Those three casts gave me the fourth place, with margin. Again, a lots of feelings. Placing fourth in my first world championship was crazy, much better than I had dared to dream about. But so very close to the podium.
When I was collecting my mind and emotions after the final someone I hadn’t talked to before did notice me and checked in on me. Thank you Kara.
Above all of that it was a really good week. Meeting all these great people. Talking about fly casting and fly fishing 24/7. Spending time watching some really good casting every day. Getting some practice in with other people. Might not seem like a big deal but for once I wasn’t alone on the field.
Thank you Magnus for giving me a spot in the team, Roger for lending me your rod and the rest of the team for your support!
A special thank you Paul for helping me get there! What a journey. Kind of crazy that we have only met via my mobile phone out on the field and how well that has worked.
Cheers, Rickard
PoD: Prize giving ceremony Trout Distance