Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 18 October 2025
I’ve mentioned before that Paul once asked what’s next? He suggested CI and I said competing. The competing thing went quite well. So after a while the CI thing felt quite compelling. We did work on it a bit on and off after the worlds championships.
But this summer it got at bit more real? Like ”have you found an assessment date yet?” Well no? Didn’t think it would be that hard and such to find an assessment date. But looking at dates it was like only one assessment available. So I did shoot an email to the organiser asking a bit about the event. Like, ”Do you have a mentor? Are you ready?” Well I have the mentor part down. Ready? Am I Paul? Yes you are! So I did sign up for the certification. And it was here things got hard.
Making the CI real and suddenly it was like I lost all my skills as soon as I was thinking about it. Suddenly false casting 40’ can feel awkward. And teaching!? Well that’s a new beast we can say. Or I have some ideas of teaching things and somethings I can teach rather well. The things I can teach the best isn’t fly casting related. And the CI study guide wasn’t my best assistance, we can leave it there. Or to be a bit more fair, I found some really good bits in there. Like focusing on the positive things and leave the student alone for a bit.
The mandatory teaching workshop for the CI they surely got one thing right, that Mark Surtees is a bloody great teacher. They might have used different wording but not far from it. I was up in the middle of the night to be sure to have the workshop in place for my examination.
So summer went by, I had a competition to prepare for and some fishing to do. Like always using competitions as an excuse. Didn’t even win. And some fishing was pushed asides with the excuse that I needed to practice. But things were going along quite decently I thought. Teaching got more interesting and I was finding new nuances in teaching methods for fly casting. And after today I realise that I really want to read the books Paul has been pushing. I’ve started with one, I do really enjoying when I pick it up. But now I know more why.
Summer passed by, the competition did also and suddenly it was the weekend before the event. I don’t think I’ve ever casted worse than during this weekend. I had some pretty bad winds messing with me. So suddenly I felt like I had no clue how to do proper false casting with 40’ of line. How could that happen? I did message Paul and we setup a meeting on Monday. And then everything looked good again. Good, because the following days were a bit hectic at work so no time for casting and just a little bit of studying.
Enter Thursday. I’m picking up the rental at the airport. This time I was better prepared. I had requested an automatic. Last time I hadn’t thought about that and ended up with a manual, first time driving on the moron side of the road. In London rush hour. Not wanting to do that again. Especially not in a small Fiat 500. This time I got an humongous SUV. Driving it felt great. Until I reached half of the road to the hotel. Suddenly I was driving in the TV show Emmerdale. The smallest, narrowest roads I’ve ever seen. Sharing the road with sheep and cars in a road where you cannot meet. And the road was 60 mph. The have good humor the britts. Cannot take that away.
When I arrived at the hotel it was like a board meet-up. After getting my room I went for a walk and stumbled upon Graeme and Nick casting.
I have to round off here because I’m bloody tired and it’s in the middle of the night. I’ll continue next week. I passed, it feels bloody great. And the Rio Single handed Spey can quite easily be carried at the backing knot, to give you a taste what to follow.
Cheers, Rickard.