Tracy&James | Sunday, 14 January 2024
Many years ago, actually getting on for two decades, Tracy and I found ourselves in Dubai on a family holiday. I distinctly remember one meal in the hotel where I was tasked with selecting the wine to accompany our food. As with most wine lists the offerings got more expensive the further down the page I read, culminating in a bottle which our quick currency conversion indicated was the equivalent of £9000. [Bear in mind that this was the standard wine list that was delivered to every table, I suspect the 'expensive' stuff was reserved for their special guests]. Anyway, I enjoy a glass of wine and I like to think I can tell what I'm drinking, i.e. I can differentiate between grape varieties (more so with white wine rather than red) when challenged in blind taste test. But it's subtle, a hint of grapefruit indicating a Sauvignon Blanc, a slight fizz on the tongue giving away a Riesling etc. As such, I've come to the conclusion that there is a limit to how much I'm prepared to pay for a such a drink. Sure, they all taste a little bit different but there's no one taste that I'd be prepared to pay (significantly) more for than any other. I also suspect that the £9000 bottle in Dubai was priced on its rarity rather than its effect on the palate, and rarity doesn't matter to me one bit – it's all going to end up in the same white porcelain receptacle at the end of the day (or actually before the end of the meal these days). I think this 'value for money' assessment is something we all do for pretty much every purchase we make (this is why we plumped for a reasonably priced Pinot Grigio at the meal in Dubai), and I'll be doing the same assessment for the 16 minutes of fly casting being offered for 550 Euros at the next ICSF world championships (ok, if you're also a Spey caster you can get 10 or so minutes more).
The entry fee proposed for the event in Sweden represents an increase of 175% over the previous championship in Norway. This is also on top the ICSF affiliation fees that have doubled from 400 to 800 Euros in the short time since the vote to put fly casting sport under the ICSF umbrella. To quote Lee Cummings, the former UK team captain and organiser of the UK world Championships in Millom, Cumbria - “The irony is when we were sold the benefits of joining the ICSF the main one was having access to more funds”. Undoubtedly more money is being spent on the championships these days, but the policy to claw this back from the competitors will, in my opinion, back fire in a big way. For Tracy and myself to attend and compete, including the entry fees, accommodation and travel will cost us over £3000 and a week's annual leave from work. To reiterate, that's for us to have 16 minutes of fly casting each. This, to me, is very much starting to look like that expensive bottle of wine in Dubai – it's simply not for me.
Another thing that makes me think that the ICSF have lost the plot is that they want to charge people 100 Euros just to turn up and watch. I don't think I've ever seen a spectator at any of the world championships I've been to, apart maybe for family of the competitors and, to be honest, they tend to look for something else to do after the first 20 minutes of fluff flinging. I think pretty much everyone in the competition casting community knows we're a geeky niche of an already niche sport. I'd even suggest that the majority of fly fishers look at us in a quizzical way – thinking why on earth would they want to cast just for the hell of it. So finding an audience, outside of those who are already involved is a non-starter. Spending money on live streaming the event is a total waste of time – I'll hazard a guess right now that the only people watching will be those that the ICSF have priced out of attending.
So what is the future? Personally I think now is the time for the casters to be looking into taking back their sport. Forget the 'professionalism' because that is going nowhere other than shrinking the field down to those who have government funding in order to pay the exorbitant fees. Let's get back to the roots of things, competitions where those attending are expected to help run things etc. No need for paid, professional stewards and other hangers-on etc. Whilst we're at it let's fix the wind lottery issue, e.g. run heats across multiple lanes. This is easy over grass, and means measurements will be accurate rather than a best guess from a guy in a boat 10 metres away from where your fly landed. We could also introduce a genuine team award as well as the individual titles.
Tracy and I have loved attending the World Championships over the last decade or so, especially meeting and making friends with people that we only previously knew through Facebook etc. Up until we saw what the ICSF had done with the pricing this week we were beginning our training, always in the hope of doing better than last time. We've also encouraged other nations to think about getting involved by introducing them to the competition side of things at the BFCC, entries from the Netherlands, France and Spain were a distinct possibility – again I'll be interested to see if the ICSF policy has killed off that interest before they even knew about it.
Time for a revolution I think. Have a great week.
James