Tracy&James | Wednesday, 26 March 2025
Immediately outside of my front door is a grassed area where I can practice fly casting. Unfortunately it's not big enough to do any out-and-out distance work unless the wind is in a very specific direction, and even then my casts fly past the entrance to a children's play area, thus if there are any kids about, I simply don't attempt it for fear of upsetting a belligerent parent. As such, I tend to use the area to practice accuracy and presentation casts (I also see if I can land my fluff across the road on the far pavement whilst going under the bar of a wooden fence – this is a tough cast). When practising accuracy I always take a tape measure with me to make sure I place my target cones at the correct distance according to the ICSF accuracy rules.
The ICSF rules state the following with regards to the placement of the bulls-eye targets:
The targets are to be placed about 90 degrees on the stand, (in fan form, with 2 targets on each side of the centerline), randomly between 8 and 15 meters from the stand (measured from the front of the stand, to the center of the individual targets).
I'll let BFCC casters into a little secret here, as I am the one who sets out the targets at the competitions I almost always put one target at the maximum, 15 meters, and one target at the minimum, 8 meters, with the other two somewhere in between. As such, if you practice casting to targets at 15m and 8m (and perhaps learn the number of aerial strips or line slips between the two) then there's always going to be two targets that you should score well on (you'd think the 8m target would be easy, but it's as much leader as line outside of the rod tip, so can be tricky especially in wind). With this in mind, I always measure the min and max distance for my own practice, thus I'm very accustomed to how a 15m cast looks and feels.
At my first casting competition of the year, in Guadalajara, Spain, there was an accuracy event to the ICSF rules. To say the wind was swirly was an understatement and as a result my score was not as good as it could have been. I was a little surprised though when on round 1 (of the 4 required), I missed what was clearly the longest target by casting short. I put it down to 'one of those things' I guess, and thought I'd try and get everything straighter on my next go. In round two I did exactly the same thing, short again. To be honest I can't remember what I did on rounds 3 and 4, but I know when I finished I had the strong suspicion that the target was placed incorrectly. After the event had finished and everyone was off practising distance casting (as they do), I sneakily measured the distance from the caster's position to the centre of the offending bulls-eye – I was right, it was over 16m. Now this wouldn't be a problem apart from the fact that I was so drilled at hitting 15m and that I 'knew' that this target couldn't be any further.
This then brings me back to the ICSF rules and particularly the illustrated casting court picture that is included. The fact is that the picture and the words don't match up! In Spain, the course setters had followed the diagram to the letter (shown in the picture of the day). This shows that the target distance is measured perpendicularly from an extended line from which the caster must stand behind. Anyone with the most rudimentary geometry knowledge would know that this is not the distance to the caster's stand, as described in the wording. According to the wording, the diagram should show two semi-circular lines, centred on the casting stand, between which the targets should be arranged. I think the ICSF should clarify what they actually require when they next update their fly casting rules.
Tracy and I will be at the UK Fly Casting Championships in Millom, Cumbria next weekend. We hope there won't be any over (or under) length targets there.
Have a great week, James.