Scarborough Fly & Bait Casting Association
23 Willowhurst Crescent, Scarborough  Ontario M1R 3R7
Phone & Fax - 416/755-5663
E Mail - coachman@pathcom.com
Web Site - www.pathcom.com/~coachman

 THE REEL THING                                                                             May 1995

 

Our winter activities at Samuel Hearn School are finished until next September now as we are finally outside at beautiful Milliken Park and Pond for our Wednesday evening sessions of practice,

instruction and fish stories.  Speaking of which, Mary and Kip Van Kempen, along with Sheila and I, braved unspeakable conditions up in Haliburton for our spring ice-out trip.  It was more like an ice-in trip though.  Mary stole everybody's thunder with a lovely 19' brookie, her biggest ever.

More to report:  Scott, Steve and Paulo had opening day success on the Ganny and Duffins areas with 'bows while Mike, Paul and I topped off several other outings on the Ganny with a nice 17" brown, along with a few smaller ones for the pan.  Previous outings produced 16 big steelies (up to 17 lbs, 35") and browns up to 20" for me.  Hopefully we will have more to report from the rest of the gang - and Rick Matusiak - for the next Reel Thing.

A number of casters have already been out and practicing distance casting for the up-coming series of summer competitions.  This after honing their skills all winter long in the gym.  It should be a great season with our guys and gals enjoying the fruits of their efforts, both on the streams and lakes, as well as on the tournament trail.

The first tournament, a fun and friendly day of accuracy competition at St. Catharines is scheduled for Saturday, June 3rd.  It would be nice if we could be well represented in this one as the St. Catharines casters always make an effort to support our own Scarborough Championships.  Please get back to me if you can make this outing to St. Kits. 

The following weekend, June 10th & 11th, of course, is a must for all of us!  We annually host the Scarborough Open Championships and this event has developed into the one of the most rewarding and enjoyable casting weekends for everybody attending, whether as competitors, or simply assisting with the running of this popular event.  It is imperative this year that we maintain our record of excellent member participation in the Scarborough Open, as the City of Scarborough is bending over backwards cooperating with us in all our casting endeavours, especially with our club hosting the North American Championships in August and we must show them that we are truly a solid operation.

Whether you are planning on competing or not and the largest part of the annual entry in this one is the novice section, with great prizes, medals and plaques, we still need as many of our folks as possible to lend a hand.  PLEASE make every effort to attend and if you can bring a friend or relative to also assist then even better.  Please call me if you require any further info.  Free lunches will probably be supplied for all helpers and competitors.

The Scarborough Open is followed the next weekend by the Canadian Open and on the weekend of June 24th & 25th, the Great Lakes Championships in Columbus, Ohio.  It looks like we will have a good showing for these events as well.  Those casters wishing to go to Columbus must get in touch with me as soon as possible so that we can correlate the travelling details etc.

Things are falling into place quite smoothly for our hosting of the National Championships (July 31 - August 5), thanks to the cooperation of everybody involved, i.e. most of our club.  Special thankyous at this time should go to Irene, Pam, Sheila, Debbie O, Debbie D, Pete, Scott, Steve, Dave, Paul, John, Rod and of course all the others who have promised to help out one way or another with this huge undertaking.  We all owe a special debt of thanks to Mike Dinner who has worked tirelessly in the difficult job of fund-raising and promotion.  The T.S.N. and CANADIAN SPORTFISHING T.V. spectacular planned for the tournament is entirely attributable to Mike's efforts on our behalf!

This will be a one hour high quality finished production, tieing in actual fishing segments (Steve Rajeff and I) with competitive tournament casting, filmed during the entire week of the event.  It will be shown on T.S.N. at least 8 times in the '95 - '96 season and will obviously bring more publicity and public awareness to our sport than ever achieved before. 

I think it goes without saying that this is one of the most exciting years for me personally in my more than fifty years in competitive casting. Sheila and I believe in our heart of hearts that we will have just about every member of our club, past and present, involved one way or another, even if it is just for a morning or afternoon to lend us a hand during the week-long event with the myriad of little chores that have to be attended to, or simply to wish us luck for a successful venture.  Please call us if you can help out in any way at all.

We are all looking forward to seeing everybody testing what they practiced and learned in the gym all winter on our floating targets at the Milliken Pond on Wednesday evening.

See yah!

 

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