Gale Force In Glasgow (revised)

 Ah, technology is a wonderful thing. I missed a couple of important things in my report so you will have to read it all again to see what they were!

Welcome to Scotland was the sign I spotted through eyes slitted against the wind and rain as the remnants of hurricane Katrina started to make it’s presence felt. Great weather for fly casting. Not.

They breed them hardy north of the border. Hardly anyone who had pre booked the day failed to turn up and we a had a few who just turned up just for the craic. Thank you all for coming. On a personal note it was great catching up with old friends I usually only get to see once a year. I use the term friends loosely because they are mainly trying beat me and as I look down the result sheet I see most of them did so they went home happy. Make the most of it boys, it won’t happen again!

The BFCC had been invited by the Alberto Laidlaw and the Glasgow Casting Club to hold an event at the Lochinch Police Club in the Pollock Country Park in the middle of Glasgow. The facilities were great and it was certainly nice to have somewhere warm and dry where we could have a coffee and sandwich. The lounge was on the first floor with a huge window so that we could look down on the casting area, not that we had much time for it because we had twenty three casters who competed and with five events to get through we needed all the time we had.

The weather meant we were not going to see any really big casts but there were some very impressive ones none-the-less. Two stand out. Hamish Young casting in the B100 beat every one (including us so called elites) in the five weight with a fantastic 110′ 9”. Hamish, you are now officially Elite. Hamish also won the B100 class outright. He was run close in the five weight by William Mcguire and Tamas Bascali. The other one was canny old Mike Marshall who only cast in the T120 and put one out with his usual aplomb to 212′, streets ahead of anyone else.

The seven weight contest was really strange, some of us cast it less than the five. However John Reynolds did show us how it should be done with a cast of 123′ and James Evans had a nice 111’6”. Most of the rest of us didn’t even break the 100′ barrier. Very odd.

Things started to improve when we got the nine weights going, several of us got over 130′. However there was a dead heat for first place (which is an unusual event) with our own John Reynolds and Scotlands William Mcguire hitting a very respectable 138′ which tied for first place.

Mick Bell turned up trumps with 189′ 1” in the T38. James Hek is someone to watch for the future as he cast a new J17 record of 143′ 9”. That is a mighty cast for a fifteen year old, well done.

Also to be congratulated for achieving their 35yrd badges are Hamish Young and Mike Barrio, again, well done guys.

There was some potentially outstanding talent on display. It was such a pity that the weather didn’t allow them to shine.

I have a few thank yous that deserve a mention in dispatches, Alberto Laidlaw for the venue and the organisation. Mike Marshall for his tireless efforts in getting us all up there and driving up with all the BFCC paraphernalia. Tracy Thomas for keeping the score and us in order. John Reynolds for showing us some decent casting and, despite a bad hip, staying out in whatever the weather could throw at us to mark the distances. Will Shaw for his efforts in the field. Ally Bremner ditto, and not being a bloke ( which took me by surprise, I thought Ally was a mans name, especially in Scotland) and Roger Miles for keeping up our instructing arm.

I know I have missed names, I’m sorry, so let me just thank everyone who turned up on a not very nice day and made it a superb day.

The grapevine has it that the venue has already been re-booked for next year.

Look out for a write up in FF&FT some time soon by their roving reporter and ace caster Ben Dixon, who also had the camera out, so we might get some photos as well.

From a finally dried out

Mike H

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 13th, 2011 at 1:56 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

 

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