Tracy&James | Wednesday, 31 December 2025
I've probably fished less in 2025 than in any other year since I took up fishing at the age of 9 or 10, maybe with the exception of the Covid year when we couldn't legally leave the house for non-essential reasons. The main reason for this was my hand injury sustained on day four of a month-long fishing trip to the Bahamas. I did actually fish out the trip, although I had to struggle to learn an effective left-handed double haul. By the end of the holiday I guess I was doing ok – I was catching bonefish, some nice ones too, but I couldn't handle the weight of my predator outfit so didn't catch any cudas or sharks. I've continued to do some left handed casting practice once I got home, getting to the point where my best with a #7 outfit was over 120ft and getting close to that mark with a #5. Perhaps that will remain a target for 2026 – i.e. to cast a #5 over 120ft.
A couple of weeks ago I had a hospital appointment for half an hour of torture – this is how the consultant described it as I walked into his surgery. Anyway, I was there for nerve conduction tests which involved attaching various electrodes to my limbs and then shocking me with a 300 volt pulse of electricity. Obviously this results in involuntary spasms of the muscles and the timing of the signal transit through my nerves gives an indication of any problems. It turns out I have carpal tunnel syndrome in the same hand that I injured in the Bahamas, so that probably explains why my recovery hasn't been as expected and why I have to manually crush my fingers into a fist shape every morning to get them moving.
In hindsight, given what happened, I had a pretty good year in casting competitions once I was casting right handed again. I won the BFCC championship and the Game Fair championship, as well as beating the ST27 record that had been held by John Reynolds for the best part of a decade. Unfortunately I was still recovering on the day when most of the years records were set – a nicely windy day in Dodleston, Cheshire, this was where Nick broke the #5 record and Steve took my salmon overhead S55 record. That said, at a later event I managed the second longest #5 cast recorded at the BFCC, just 6 inches short of Nick's new record – a record for the age category (50+) though.
Talking about casting competitions and BFCC events, 2026 is going to see some changes. Some events simply aren't working anymore in terms of attracting an attendance, so there is going to be a re-assessment of where the events are going to take place with perhaps an emphasis of hooking up with some local clubs or events. I'm sure Tracy will have some news on this in the coming months.
We've also been talking about slightly changing the game fair competitions. It's clear that during the day people wandering down to have a look at the casting competitions, to see what it's all about, are far more likely to experience some distinctly 'average' casting rather than the spectacle of a really good caster throwing a long line. Therefore we have suggested that we run an invitational competition every day after the daily comps have finished, probably around 3:30pm. The idea is to have maybe 4 or 5 really good casters engage in a shoot-out with a commentary and clear scoring, so that any spectators know what's going on. We were perhaps thinking trout distance on one day, ST27 on the next and salmon distance on the final day. If there are any competitive casters reading this who think they would like to be involved and also competing for the game fair championship then please get in touch – it's a great weekend and it goes without saying that there's fishing, music, drinking and lumi-line casting once the fair closes for the day.
It only remains for me to wish you all a happy new year. I hope you enjoy yourselves if you're out (or at home) celebrating. Tracy and I have volunteered to make cocktails for friends – it could get messy!
All the best, James.