New at GGACC

[kazu]

Spey enthusiast at Golden Gate Angling and Casting Club will be hosting friendly spey competitions during winter month, inspired by late Jim Green’s passion for the spey casting and fishing.

Rules:
Spey casting
Same as Spey-O-Rama.
Here
Overhead casting
Use same rod as spey casting.
No restrictions on lines.
Each caster gets three casts and longest one is recorded
Scoring
Combination of spey casting scores and overhead casting score.

Sunday Jan 6 9:30 AM Jimmy Green Spey Games (Spey & Overhead)
Sunday Feb 3 9:30 AM Jimmy Green Spey Games (Spey & Overhead)
Sunday March 2 9:30 AM Jimmy Green Spey Games (Spey & Overhead)

Sunday Nov 30 9:30 AM Jimmy Green Spey Games (Spey & Overhead)
Sunday Dec 21 9:30 AM Jimmy Green Spey Games (Spey & Overhead)

Nelson Ishiyama, Chief Judge of Jimmy Green Spey-O-Rama and one of early participants of Jim’s Fly fair quotes:

The Jim Green Fly Fair

After retiring from a career designing rods for Fenwick, Sage and others, Jim Green and his wife Carol moved to Asotin, Washington in the heart of steelhead country, at the confluence of the Grande Ronde and Snake rivers.
Their home was headquarters for a dedicated group of serious steelheaders and pioneering speycasters who always showed up for the steelhead at Jim & Carol’s in September and October.

Starting in about 1997, Jim began organizing the Jim Green Fly Fair near his home. One of the highlights was the casting games, which featured for the first time, speycasting with two-handed rods. Speycasting from right and left sides and overhead casting were the basic events, with divisions for men, women and pros. Longest casts in each category and for the total of all three categories were recorded, but the prizes were reserved for the casters closest to the average distances.

Rods and lines were freely shared among competitors, with many of the rods designed and built from scratch in Jimmy’s garage and homemade lines spliced together in a multitude of custom designs. Rods leaned in racks and against trees available for others to use and the custom made lines could be borrowed from their creators. It was both a serious but very friendly competition.

Rules, gear, places and facilities changed from time to time. Some years the events were cast on fields with special grass leaders and other years casts were launched from a shallow plastic-lined pool or from the hillside casting pool at Jimmy and Carol’s house. Always, however, Jimmy’s goal was to make the competition simulate real fishing conditions and to use authentic fishing gear. Indeed it was not unusual for anglers and guides to show up to compete in wet waders, just off the river.

As in so many other aspects of fly fishing, Jimmy was the one who got us started. He was the originator of American speycasting contests.