Tracy&James | Sunday, 20 August 2023
James and I are currently driving back from the latest BFCC event in Derbyshire after a weekend of fishing, casting and socialising with friends. Yesterday we had a fabulous day on the river Wye with Don, where I caught my first, and second, wild rainbow whilst dry fly fishing. Both Don and James caught good sized brownies too and we had great fun watching a brownie from a footbridge as Don cast for it and it took and then went under the bridge and down the river, making Don have to quickly follow it. Much thanks to Don for a wonderful day on a beautiful river.
After this we met up with Mark and Mike and went to the local pub to make sure we were suitably relaxed with alcohol ready for the BFCC meeting. The meeting started well with a good number of people for instruction so Mark S, Mike, Mark P, Ian G and Don were kept busy throughout the morning. Huge thanks to all of them for supporting the event.
The competition, however, was a little quiet; this being the second successive comp with few entrants. This does make it a nice informal casting session for those who do attend as we get to work more closely together on critiquing and advising each other. Thanks to those who came along and competed; for those of us preparing for the world champs next year, these events are good preparatory practice sessions. We're not quite sure why people aren't turning up for the comps, although after the comp finished we had an impromptu casting session with some of those who came for instruction and the instructors, who all then enjoyed trying out the different comp outfits.
I was quite happy with the competition as I won the accuracy and came second in the 5#; coming second overall to James, with Callum following with a close third place. Callum's casting has improved vastly over the year and now as a senior member, he is competing strongly in the single handed events. It was good to see our friends and catch up, and make quite a few new ones. As usual at these meetings, we had lots of chats about fishing for all sorts of species and locations; with several plans being made by many attendees to meet up to go fishing with people that they met at the BFCC events.
In a few weeks, James and I will be running the fly casting comps at the Welsh Game Fair and then the final BFCC Meeting of the year in Essex. Following which we will be off to the Caribbean for our annual saltwater fishing trip – I'm really looking forward to that. James needs to get fly tying as I need my fuzzy shrimps; his fly invention that always works brilliantly.
Whatever you are doing this weekend, enjoy
Cheers
Tracy
