Ashford, May 2015

Just before the meeting we had the news that Mike Marshall had suffered a heart attack. As I write this a couple of weeks later I can tell you that Mike is home and recovering well. I am sure we all wish him well.

This was possibly the best meeting we have had in Ashford, It’s not an area known as a fly fishing hot spot. The weather was pretty good, the wind as fickle as ever. It was James and my turn to see the stiffish breeze seem to disappear whenever it was our turn to cast. There is no point me repeating the results, they are there in black and white on the results page. James 204′ with the T120 deserves a mention, he seems to have hit a purple patch with that outfit. Mick Copeman is like a good wine and gets better with age because he increased his S70 records in the five weight and ST27 (but I still want to see his birth certificate!)

Congratulations to Dan Shillabeer and David Fisher for qualifying for their 35yd and 40 badges respectively.

We didn’t have too many for the instructors to cope with so we were able to give everyone some quality time, which is nice. Not that all our instruction isn’t quality all the time, but not feeling the need to rush around trying to fit everybody in makes for a relaxed atmosphere and a pleasurable day for all.

One slightly unusual event happened, which, I think, sums up the BFCC. Mark Weatherley had heard about the event and came along to ‘just see what’s going on’. I suggested he watched the competition and, if he felt like it, he could help out with timing and marking. After lunch he asked if he could have some tuition. Tracy took a few bob off him and off we went. He kindly wrote a comment to the club afterwards and I have taken the liberty of publishing it here.

”What a very enjoyable day I had . Everybody was so friendly , even though it is a competition day. I was made very welcome to the point where I was even asked to do the timekeeping for the morning session . Having a casting lesson from one of the regular competitors was such a good idea and it is something I would suggest all novice anglers do , as it helps to show where you can improve and polish your technique, ( I will hopefully be able to cast as far if not further with better presentation all day without feeling exhausted) .I shall make a point of telling all new anglers that I meet on my fishing days out to visit one of the BFCC shows”.

This is by no means the first thank you the club has received but it does highlight the quality of work people like Mark Surtees, Trevor Hayman, RogerMiles, John Reynolds and others do to help improve peoples standards of fly casting.

Many thanks To Willesborough CC who hosted us and provided the refreshments again this year. And, finally, a big thank you to everyone who turned up and helped out and created such a good event.

MikeH

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2015 at 4:36 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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