The various qualifications

[Boisker]

Thanks Paul... that’s probably helped clarify a bit, if I did head off down the instructors route then AAPGAI is probably the obvious choice... as challenging as any and probably easier to find other instructors and support ‘locally’. There is an intro day in October in Wales, I may arrange to pop along. There’s a fee but it gives the chance to spend time casting with a load on CI and MCI and have an assessment of where I currently am... although I can guess that already- backhand execution needs more work and Spey an absolute shitload
I’ll have a think

[Graeme H]

Boisker,

I think it’s worth preparing for both CI and MCI exams (tasks and teaching) because teaching this stuff makes us learn more. Whether you actually sit the exams is almost irrelevant if the only reason to get the qualifications is for self improvement.

However, if you sit and pass the exams, you can then help others do the same (ie. more teaching and you get even better) and you can make enough pocket money to buy gear and materials regularly.

I don’t charge much - enough to make sure people value the lessons I give - but it pays for new lines and an occasional trip to Malaysia.

Cheers, Graeme

PS. I don’t know about the other groups. FFi is the only group with a presence in Australia

[Paul Arden]

I had to spend quite a bit of time on my anchors, Boisker. While I was pretty happy with all my Speys the distances for AAPGAI Masters is tough. With a long belly line it's quite a lot of line you end up turning around. To be honest it's not how I fish - I don't pick up long lengths of line on the dangle to cast, instead I pick up less, slipping line where I can, make the angle change and then for distance I'll use a Poke.

It was good practise however and I learned quite a bit doing this. The reason that the AAPGAI single handed Speys are so hard is because Ally Gowans wrote the test. It's out of proportion to the rest of the exam, but as a consequence the standard is really high in Spey casting within AAPGAI. And that tells me a lot - make the bar higher and instructors will train to that level. So you can actually use the exam to raise the casting ability of instructors (and teaching ability - because they'll have to learn to do it). Of course it also depends on the examiners as well. When the Spey casting for FFF Masters was done on grass it was a joke. I saw lots of Spey casts that wouldn't work on water. What is missing in that association is the Spey knowledge that you will find in AAPGAI. On the other had the mechanics of overhead casting is higher in IFF examiners than in AAPGAI. So in that regards IFF is harder.

One way of looking at these associations is that they are a body of knowledge. For AAPGAI Spey knowledge is massive. Really, it's very impressive. For Overhead mechanics and teaching structure the IFF is higher - mostly because of the work of Bill Gammel and Bruce Richards which has been inside the core of that association for 30 years. So this would be a reason to take more than one qualification.

Cheers, Paul

[Boisker]

Thanks all...
it’s a long way off whichever I choose... although everything would need some serious hours of focus to get the required consistency, my Spey is still very much at the beginners stage...
I know all the Spey casts (albeit I can never remember what they are all called!) but they are very poor, I generally practice on grass, but they don’t feel good on grass, the feel isn’t there and i reckon you end up overpowering the cast and losing any sense of finesse. (interesting what you say about the change to grass Paul, makes a lot of sense); tricky part is having somewhere close enough to practice them regularly on water... i’d need to track somewhere down.

I also don’t use the Spey casts at all on my local rivers... except for the roll cast, and even that is mostly just to pick up. So i’ll have to think about that, perhaps IFF is the sensible option, but APPGAI would force me to spend longer on Spey....

[Paul Arden]

(interesting what you say about the change to grass Paul, makes a lot of sense)

I regularly saw the line being slid around the grass. That doesn't work over water! I remember Lee telling me that in order to pass this one should spend a couple of winters just working on anchors. And he is right; it is a lot of work. I can train a reasonable competent caster to pass the IFF CCI in two sessions. A less competent caster would take a couple of months of practise. But AAPGAI Advanced would be minimum six months just working on anchor placement. It's tough, but what does inspire me is the consequence of this is that the level is very high. The higher you set the bar, the higher everyone jumps.

But at the end of the day it probably doesn't matter because there is no one to teach anyway! The only guys who want lessons, are trainee instructors The vast majority of anglers never get a lesson. (That's not entirely true and I've made a reasonable living over the years teaching fly casting, but when you look at the average standard of casting on UK stillwaters, or US rivers, we are really very unsuccessful because the people who need help the most never come and get it!)

And that leads to another problem, because in order to become a competent instructor passing the exam is not enough, you need to practise teaching real students. It takes thousands of lessons to really learn how to teach. I have this 3000 number of days stuck in my head for having learned a type of fishing reasonably well to "expert" level. It's also probably a reasonable number of students that would make a "master" instructor in the true sense of the word.

The worst thing about this casting world, is there at times, is a lot of ego. A good teacher cannot bring his ego to a lesson. The lesson is always about the student, not the teacher. I mean at the end of the day we are trying to teach people to catch fish with hooks wrapped in feathers, so that they can put them back. I really don't think it merits the significance that people sometimes attach to themselves over it. It's actually a pretty dumb thing to do!!!

Cheers, Paul