Paul Arden | Monday, 13 August 2018
It's the final preparations for the World Championships in Fly Casting which will be held in Millom, Cumbria next weekend, events starting Friday. Everyone will be busy doing their final tune-ups to their casting, organising their tackle and mentally preparing themselves. I'm really looking forward to this event, hopefully it will be the fairest event weather-wise and I have of course been making sacrifices to the Wind God for the past week. I've been donating bits of colourful fluff mostly, leaving some in trees, and various parts of the casting field. So I'm expecting a good wind, but also have been preparing for a bad wind, because history has taught me to do this!
It will be wonderful to catch up with so many great friends. Some of my best friends are coming to this competition, to fight for the silver and bronze medals. ;)
My casting sport is pretty good right now, I've been practising on and off since landing in the UK last week. All I've had to work on is my delivery shots, because all the other elements I use daily while fishing and I've never had a problem with line carry since I started working on that some 17 years ago. So it's really about the longest distance delivery shots, which is not something that we normally use on a day to day basis while fishing. At least I don't where I fish - and I think where I fish is the hardest fly fishing casting that there is.
I picked up a prototype 12WT this week from our rod builder Lee Martell who visited for the weekend. It was interesting because I was curious to try it with the 5MED line (I use the HT10 for Trout Distance). The delivery with it was very good, but I really struggled to throw the sort of back loops that the HT10 generates, and I could feel that it might cause some elbow pain, so I stopped using it.
Just as well eh? We've sold around 50 HT10s, mainly to competition casters - also to fisherman too of course - and it would be a bit odd to have so many HT10s in the World Championships and then to rock up with an HT12!!! I think that the Italian team would kill me :-)))) (Those guys must be animals by the way - I actually have a spare HT10 for them because chances are if anyone is going to break an HT10 it will be one of them!).
So here is hoping for a great event, with fair weather for everyone. I've bought warm clothes and waterproof gear. I think this is only sensible when visiting the North! Safe travels over everyone.
Cheers,
Paul
PS An old POD photo from a few years back!