Thank you to all that followed Team USA this year at the 2009 World Fly Fishing Championships! As many of you know, this championships was truly a one-of-a-kind event. For the first time in it’s history, the Championships were predominantly a stillwater or loch (lake) championship. For those that have followed Team USA over the years, historically Team USA has not performed well in the stillwater venues and for us to have a 4 out of the 5 venues consist of stillwaters, we were anxious to see how much improvement Team USA has had in these type of venues. The other uniqueness to this event was the fact that more countries participated than ever. 27 countries were involved in this championship.
We arrived into Scotland with the understanding that the wild brown trout native to Scotland were different than our “German” brown trout introduced into our country, and all the countries soon found out how difficult these natives were going to be. The normal Scottish weather was also nowhere to be found. The typical cold, windy, rainy Scottish day was only there for the opening ceremonies with torrential downpouring rain and the wary brown trout were as common as the much needed cold, windy, rainy day! All the days of competition were like a day you wish you had at the beach. Sunny, warm with very little wind. This type of weather not very conducive to catching wild loch brown trout. As you can see through the daily results, not many fish were caught and in fact in most cases if you caught one fish in a particular venue you had a great chance of winning that venue. Overall, if you got through this championship by catching 1 fish at each venue, you would have gotten into the top 5 and most likely received a medal. The top individual medalist were the only competitors to have caught at least one fish in each venue. Even the top Frenchman that finished 4th blanked 1 venue. All in all a very difficult championship for all competitors.
In the end Team USA finished with a very big comeback coming from 13th place on the final day to finishing 8th in the World, 1 possibly 2 fish from a medal. In a stillwater championships where Team USA historically has not faired well, I am extremely proud of our team! I know that we fished as well as we could and we utilized all the resources we could by fishing all of our competitors. A big congratulations goes to top Team USA finisher, Pete Erickson who finished 13th overall and had a great chance at an individual medal!
We now prepare for the rest of the qualifiers and National Championships in Oct 2009 as well as for the 2010 World Championships in Poland. Team selection for the Poland championships will be as follows: Two individuals from this year’s World Championships qualified by their individual finish in Scotland. Those two are Pete Erickson and Mike Sexton. The top 3 Point System individuals since the last National Championship will be going to Poland. Finally, the 2009 individual National Champion will have a spot on this team. Once we have those spots filled, we will determine the starting lineup and the alternate. The 3 point system qualifers will be determined from the accumulated points achieved since the 2007 National Fly Fishing Championships through the qualifiers at the end of July. We are doing this to be able to send this team to Poland 1 year prior to the championships to get prepared for the 2010 World event. So the only individual we will not know will be the 2010 National Champion which will be crowned in Oct.
The events that qualify for the point system to determine the Poland Team are as follows:
2007 National Championships – Boulder, CO
2008 World Fly Fishing Championships – New Zealand
2008 Pagosa Springs, CO
2008 Salt Lake City, UT
2008 America Cup – Frisco, CO
2008 Canadian National Championship – Mont Tremblant, CA
2009 Santa Fe, NM
2009 Michigan
2009 Bend, OR
2009 World Fly Fishing Championships – Scotland
The following events will also be included for the point total to make the roster for Team USA. Team USA will be selected at this year’s National Championships by the Top 15 accumulated points from the 2007 National Championships to the 2009 National Championships.
*2009 SE qualifier
*2009 Bozeman, MT
*2009 America Cup
*2009 Canadian National Championship – BC
*2009 Boise, ID
*2009 US National Championship
Points are achieved through any of these events by finishing in the top 30% of the total competitors at any of these events. For example, at any regional qualifier, there has typically been 24 competitors. In order to get into the points one must finish in the the top 8 out of the 24 competitiors. Obviously, the higher the finish the more points accumulated.
In this example:
1st place = 2400 points
2nd place = 1200 points
3rd place = 800 points
4th place = 600 points
5th place = 480 points
6th place = 400 points
7th place = 343 points
8th place = 300 points
Competitions that are considered International (excluding the World Championships) have a mulitiplier of 3. World Championships have a multiplier of 5. Thus the harder the competition the more points it is worth to finish in the top 30%. Also the more the competitor numbers the more points available.
These selection criteria as well as the Point system will be posted on the Team USA website. Updates to the website will be occurring on a consistent basis.
With this year’s Championship finished, Team USA has established itself as a Top 8 team in the World. Over the last 4 championships we have consistently finished in the top 8 and we are quickly approaching the top 5. Thank you for your continued support of Team USA Fly fishing!
Best Regards,
Anthony Naranja
July 27, 2009
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