It’s a funny old life, you start a journey with one destination in mind but then you arrive at the airport to discover your mates want to go somewhere else. Somewhere you never intended to go. Somewhere you actually had never thought of going to. You arrive at the new destination slightly perplexed at how you ended up there and anxious about what might happen. The anxiety lasts a while until, without realising it, you start to have one of the best and most rewarding experiences of your life. Let me explain how I ended up going somewhere I never intended to go.
I am an International Federation of Fly Fishers Master Certified Casting Instructor (IFFF MCI). There a couple of thousand IFFF instructors spread around the globe and about forty of us in the UK. Being international has its drawbacks, one of which is that we have to travel quite a bit to get together. In the last couple of years I have had to go to Denmark and Germany to get my fix of workshops and demonstrations. I have been to both GAIA and AAPGAI open days and seen what they have to offer their members and quite frankly, I was jealous. Why can’t the IFFF do something similar on a regular basis? I thought to myself. I waited.... and waited....bitched and moaned to anyone who would listen....and waited some more. I finally decided life was too short and decided to organise something myself.
I am not a natural organiser so it was with some trepidation that I pinged off an email to all the IFFF instructors in Britain and Ireland. To be frank I was astonished at the response. I think I may have hoped for something less emphatic, then I could have put my hands up and said I had tried and failed, and gone back to bitchin’ and moanin’. Instead of that I was now committed to doing something. The Sportfish shop at Theale was suggested as a good mid-way venue for our first meeting and we decided on the first day of December as the day.
This was when the journey I had planned to one destination changed to somewhere else. Somewhere potentially more exciting. What I knew but hadn’t taken into account, was the fact that apart from four of us, everyone else belonged to either AAPGAI or GAIA and they already had two weekends a year plus some regional stuff to get their instructing fix and all I was offering was more of the same. It became apparent that they wanted something different. But they did want something.
Those of you with an instructing background may have already noticed that I have used GAIA and AAPGAI in the same sentence a couple of times (ok, three now) and that is what, in the end, defined the day. We are a group of instructors from three different associations, all together in the same room, enjoying each other's company and no bloody politics. The different destination turned out to be social rather than specific. Our future meetings would be held on common ground. Water. We will fish, talk about instructing and casting, learn new techniques and learn from each other. Learn to give more bang for our clients' buck.