MY DESTINATION has a name but it's a
roundabout not a salmon pool. The third or fourth westbound on
Huntingdon's northern bypass is sponsored by Mission Speakers. If it
has this, John Major and East Anglia's best chippie to be proud of,
Huntingdon is not a place that shouts fly-fishing capital of the
world. I thread my way through the industrial estate, past more
roundabouts sponsored by food packers and hi-fi makers, looking for
signs to Huntingdon racecourse.
Once there I'll meet the British Fly
Casting Club, a band of casting enthusiasts who have abstracted the
fly-line from the river to the paddock, or taken the field out of
fieldsport, as some Greek did years ago with a javelin I guess. I'm
wary of competitions related to angling. But then there's nothing
more harmless than standing in a field lobbing plastic at the
horizon. And I'm curious too. I'm here to work out whether chucking a
fly-line as far as you can is fiercely relevant to fishing or just a
fun thing in itself, or both. Or perhaps the BFCC members have all
gone and lost the plot completely; perhaps they are all just a tip
section short of a full rod.
The place is spookily quiet -1 was
expecting a couple of team caravans and a Tannoy system - but finally
as I skirt the deserted members' enclosure I spot half a dozen cars
and someone heaving a fly-rod back and forth. I meet Mike Marshall
who runs the club and a small group of very friendly casters who
break off from a mixture of loop admiration and heckling of the man
with the rod to say hello and ask keenly whether I'm going to join in
the competition. And it's a funny thing, human nature, because as I
faux-reluctantly suggest that
I might - when in Rome and all that - and
mumble about how I'm not much good at distance casting, I can feel
the competitive blood heat. Of course I'm going to have a go.
Mike starts the timer on the next
competitor, John Reynolds. John steps up, heaves the rod back and
throws an immense line at the far hill. "That's going. That's
30yd," says Mike encouragingly. This is the five-weight heat,
using 9ft rods. I ask about the line.
"It's a Rio Long Cast," says
Mike. "It has a relatively long belly on it, so you keep more in
the air and can form a longer loop. Oh yes, well done! That's a 35yd line."
He turns to me and says quietly, "On
this game you have to come to lose. You cannot come to win, because
Mother Nature will defeat you. Somebody will get a lucky puff, it
will turn the fly over and beat you by a couple of inches. It will
drive you mad." The clock is ticking down. "You've got time
for one more good one."
John pulls in the line carefully, pacing
himself. I can see it is important not to get flustered by the clock.
But his last cast doesn't beat his best one, which reached 103 ft 6in.
Tom Benson goes next. His timing is not as
good as John's and his best is 75ft. While the others are encouraging
Tom, throwing in words of advice, I can't help but notice the
complete absence of ego from this competition, the lack of posturing
machismo that shadows casting gurus at fishing shows.
James Warbrick-Smith, a student, takes the
stand. He starts thumping the line out in a hurry and says he's not
bothering with a warm-up. But he gets a knot and Mike rushes forward
to unravel it.
"As I mumble
about how I'm not much good at distance casting, I can feel the
competitive blood heat"
"Don't help him," heckles Mick
Bell from the sidelines. "He cocked it up because of all those
untidy loops he was throwing down."
James puts in some excellent casts, but
just fails to reach the magic 100ft. I look around and suddenly eyes
are on me expectantly. I lay out the line on the Astroturf- this
surface allows the line to pick off the deck without getting too
tangled - and start. As usual, the line lands with a kink to the left
because I swing the rod in at an angle, and as usual the last few
feet of my longest efforts fail to straighten because I just haven't
got enough line speed. But I time one well and, at 94ft, it's not a
disgrace. The beeper goes and my time is up.
"You should slope the rod more,
Charles, and the angle wants to be from your left foot to your right
elbow and keep going. From that angle it is much easier to just
squint round and check that your back cast is straight."
He has also spotted that I tend to throw
one beat too late. "On all your casts you should have let it go
one swing earlier. That's when your rod was really loaded. Most
people extend too much weight forward and then it crumples in the
back-cast. The back-cast doesn't tighten up because you have got too
much fat out. The line doesn't extend and the rod doesn't load."
Finally, Mike Marshall picks
up a rod. "I'll just have a couple of casts with this. I'll use
a double taper."
The others laugh knowingly
as Mike starts to rip line off in long, aggressive strips with the
reel screeching like a macaw. John Reynolds whispers, "You've
gotta watch this now, with a double-taper. He'll probably throw this
110ft. Oh look! He's got the whole bloody line out already. He's
about 80 or something. It's incredible. It goes absolutely miles.
Just look at that. Jeepers."
"About 105,"
shouts the scorer. Mike doesn't cast for long, and before the buzzer
goes he winds up and asks, "Do you all fancy the seven-weight
next?" I notice he's reeling in for a long, long time.
While the seven-weight
competition gets underway, Mick Bell shows me the salmon rod we will
all use in the next round. "This is the baby here. This is a
beach-caster. We put an enormous great line on it and call it a
salmon rod." He points at where the markers are standing and
says, "They are going to walk back another 100ft from there. I
have managed to cast over 200ft before. How far did you get John,
209ft wasn't it?"
"No, 220ft," says
John. "But I won't get that again. There was a savage tail wind
that day."
Mike explains the set-up.
"It's a 60ft shooting head. All you do is get it in the air and
throw it. There's 81b running line and the trick is to lay that out
really carefully."
The outfit seems
particularly esoteric to me, not even vaguely relevant to how one
might actually cast for salmon. Mick thinks I've got a point but John
immediately disagrees with him. "I think the influence of
distance-casting is huge. For example, if you are standing with a row
of herons at Grafham and you can reach another 10yd farther than
them, you will have an advantage."
Someone else pointed out
that on the big Norwegian rivers this set-up would be the only way to
cover some of the lies. Mick thought for a moment and said finally,
"Casting a long way is never going to actually hinder your fishing."
John and Mick keep looking
behind, studying the wind in the hedgerow, complaining that it isn't
really getting up. Every so often a puff registers in the tall poplar
trees 50yd behind us. At that point the man with the rod works extra
hard to time his cast to coincide with whatever zephyr floats past.
They mutter about the air too; it's cool and damp and the line just
won't fly. Mick decides to start. He lays out several yards of
running line on the Astroturf, carefully arranging the coils as
though it were some ancient ritual. Finally he lifts the rod, flicks
the fly-line out ahead on the grass and pulls it in again until the
tail of it is just outside the tip ring. He locks two fingers of each
hand around the running line. With two or three swishes back and
forth he loads the rod and then lets it go.
The shooting head flies up
and out like a javelin, whipping and coiling towards the horizon, and
lands seconds later about 60yd away. I've never seen a cast like it.
"That's what we come here for!" shouts John. "One nine
four 10," shouts the marker," 194ft 1 Oin".
Each competitor gets five
minutes with the salmon rod (it takes so long to pull all the line
back in and lay it out again). Moving quickly, it looks as though I
might manage five or six casts. Everyone looks tired within a few
minutes, and its obvious that the best cast happens on the second or
third. No one beats their early efforts with the last rushed cast
before the bell.
It feels like a slingshot.
In fact, it is; the heavy shooting head is the stone, the rod is the
sling and the running line offers as little resistance as possible. I
push firmly with the top hand and pull in with my lower hand, trying
to crunch the rod. The hardest part is letting go of the running line
without letting go of the rod, stopping the forward momentum sharply
with the rod still pointing up and out. But on my third cast I feel
the rod load and deliberately fire
one swing early as Mike keeps telling me to. The line flies. And
flies. It works.
"One nine nine," shouts the
marker. I try twice more to beat it, but it soon becomes obvious that
I won't. Only when I finish and look at the score-book do I realise
it is the longest cast. I shrug coolly like it happens all the time.
But my grin betrays me.
Then Peter Thain turns up. He's strolled
casually over from some other part of the racecourse where he's been
casting clock-weights with a beach-caster. "He's a world record
holder," whispers Mike. Nursing an injury, it is concluded that
Peter will not be at his best. His
best, though, is a breathless 8ft beyond
mine and my few seconds of glory evaporate, as does Peter; he has a
quick flick with the trout class shooting head just to see how many
miles he can cast that too, and drifts back through the trees, a sort
of ephemeral wrecking ball.
But his trout experiment (which floated
5V2in past John Reynolds's whopping 167ft) didn't count as it wasn't
performed at the same time. John kept his gong and claimed a second
for the five-weight cast, while Mike Heritage stole the seven-weight
show. Peter didn't stop long enough to pick up his silverware; he
probably has too much in his cupboard anyway.
And The Field's correspondent brought
home... a couple of cloth badges.
Slowly the paddock cleared, leaving me and
Mike Bell trying 10-weights of his own creation. Then I was back on
the bypass, wondering in the end which of my three curiosities most
aptly applied to this surreal, landlocked gathering: relevant, fun or
just plain bonkers? Somehow the BFCC has it just right - a satisfying
mix of all three. I thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for a
rather batty, enjoyable and unusually instructive Sunday. Written
by Charles Rangeley-Wilson.
"The shooting
head flies up and out like a javelin, whipping and coiling towards
the horizon, and lands about 60yd away I've never seen a cast like it"
