by Karel Křivanec

Within the meeting of the General Assembly of CIPS in Cancún, Mexico, the General Assembly of FIPS-Mouche was called for Friday 17 April at 3:00 p.m. The delegates of this meeting will be accommodated in the luxurious El Cid Resort on the Riviera Mayo just on the sea coast. For the meeting of the fly fishing federation, a standard program, which is known for many previous General Assemblies, has been prepared. On the program there will be a discussion about the change of German Federation, when DSAV applied for the representation in FIPS-Mou, because the previous guarantor - DAV stopped its support of fly fishing. There should be no problem, as well as in the case of occupation of the position of the Secretary General, in the situation when the current Secretary General, Ilkka Pirrinen, resigned. The American federation proposes Paul Bourcq and it seems to me that he is a very suitable candidate and we hope that he will stay in this position for longer time than by the next election.

The FIPS-Mou Board presents its own proposal for the change in the competition rules which is not too extensive. Besides the specification of how to proceed after the landing of the fish caught, there is also an explanation regarding the spare rods. In fact, it is legalization of the procedure used. In the rules there is also confirmed the definition of the fly fishing line (minimum diameter 0.55 mm) and legalization of poly leaders. After many years of refusals, this proposals finally legalizes also micro rings in the diameter of 0.3 mm in the quantity of 3 pieces per one leader. A significant addition is a limitation of the participation of competitors to only one World Championship in a calendar year. This regards, especially the category of masters, where also active participants of the current senior championship applied as well as recent world champions in the main category which is not very fair towards other competitors who also exceeded the limit of 50 years of age and they are outside the main competition stream.

The most important point on the agenda will definitely be so-called “French proposal” signed as Fabien, where the world championship is requested to take place once in two years  in all categories. I understand that France does not have so much money as they had before due to the loss of part of state subsidies, but I would submit a counter proposal signed as Karel. About 10 years ago I submitted a proposal of the Czech Federation which was not accepted at that time. My proposal was based on the fact that competitors would be allowed to arrange their own cheaper accommodation than the FIPS-Mouche requires in a four or five-star hotel. It´s clear for everybody that our championships are expensive, but to solve all the issue by the cancellation of half of them is a bad solution.

For the youth category it is very bad and even the implementation of continental championships would not bring any savings. While today some young competitors can take part in even five championships in a line, after the limitation to a two-year cycle, it would mean probably only two championships in the youth category. Under current conditions, we can send at least ten competitors in a year to the world championship or the European championship and this also increases an interest in competition in domestic contests which open the gate to the highest goals. After reducing this option to a half, the interest in competitive fishing would probably decrease and this is something what none of us would want.

I think that we should look at the fact how they do in other angling federations and especially in FIPS-Ed, where they organize more than 12 championships per year and all this is possible. Our Fly Fishing Federation has not even understood that the category of women is completely legal and these championships could be organized for example along with the youth or masters categories. The organization of contests for women within the man category is completely unfair approach to women. If fly fishing is a sport then women should have an opportunity of their own championship and for the beginning it could be on European level.

I also suppose that completely useless prolongation of the championship by a compulsory two-day practice, because the majority of teams is in the place of the championship a week before the competition and when the training takes place on mostly devastated venues it cannot bring anything new and it is only a waste of time. The same useless thing is also the Conservation Symposium, which is taken by the majority of competitors as a waste of time when most of them do not understand what there is spoken about. This all must be paid by participants in their fees which could be to significantly lower by shortening it time from 7 to 3.5 days.

And if the Fabien´s proposal is accepted, then there are approved championships for the years 2015 and 2016, thus this could be valid from the year 2017. The argumentation with the fact that when economy improves we can come back to a one-year cycle is wrong also for the reason that such a change would have to be approved by ¾ majority, which I regard as impossible with the current number of 40 member countries.

And finally there are also applications for two future championships – Finland 2017 and Wales 2018 and youth championship 2017 which Slovenia applied for. Slovenian application is an example how such an official document should look like and that one with a signature of Fabien should have such validity for FIPS-Mouche like this article from me. I hope that also competitors will speak their mind about the changes in the organization of championships, because this regards especially them and their representatives at the General Assembly often do not know what it all is about and they enjoy their trip in a different way that thinking over the rules. But if competitors will not watch it, then it will be only their problem...