How’s your cast?
Go up against the best at accuracy tournament
Fishing can be pastoral, calming, challenging and thrilling as well as physically and psychologically therapeutic. But casting is all about physics.
Throwing a line doesn’t require a degree in mechanical science because the brain subconsciously does the math. Repetition teaches the muscles to execute subtle motions dictated by those mental calculations. Or, as Eddie Matuizek of Springdale puts it: “Practice improves accuracy, increases comfort with the tackle and makes you fish better.”
The physics of casting will be tested in public when Mr. Matuizek and the Pittsburgh Casting Club host a regional Accuracy Tournament at Carnegie Lake in Highland Park from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday.
Members will compete for tournament status using spinning, casting and fly rods. Nonmembers are invited to challenge some of the city’s master casters at the free public event.
Tournament casting was a popular spectator sport near the turn of the 20th century. National tours featuring champion casters drew crowds at venues as near as the former Motor Square Garden in East Liberty and as large as Madison Square Garden in New York. The Pittsburgh Casting Club was founded in 1924 and hosted the 24th National Casting Championships in 1932, the last year competitive casting was included in the international Olympic Games.
“They still have tournament casting in Europe,” said Mr. Matuizek. “It used to be well-attended here.”
Competitive casting hit a snag in the 1960s and ’70s with the arrival of affordable fishing boats and their manufacturers’ successful marketing tool, televised professional bass tournaments. The Pittsburgh club made its last cast in the 1970s.
Mr. Matuizek said he discovered tournament casting while reading an article during a fishing trip to Erie about seven years ago. He attended a competition in Connecticut and was hooked.
The sport is “coming back a little,” he said. In recent years the growing West Coast clubs have become more active. When Mr. Matuizek revived the Pittsburgh organization in 2017, he found signs of a generational change in fishing demographics. The first meeting was attended by 10 women and two men.
Under American Casting Association rules, the tournament will include accuracy events for ¼ounce lures thrown with spinning reels, ⅜-ounce lures on spinning or casting reels and ⅝-ounce plug casting using casting reels. Fly anglers will test their accuracy using dry flies, wet flies and bass bugs. Casters aim their hookless lures at 30-inch-diameter hoops floating at distances of 25, 50 or 65 yards.
“The games teach all the fundamentals [anglers] would need to handle any fishing situation .… The games help [them] to cast better and more confidently,” said Mr. Matuizek, who took first place in a fly category at a mid-Atlantic tournament in 2016.
This year he took home a bronze medal in ¼-ounce spinning reel accuracy, losing to casters he described as the best in the world. One of them, Steve Rajeff, a 14-time world champion and 44-time American Casting Association grand all-around champion, demonstrated his technique at the Pittsburgh Casting Club in 2017. The world’s best casters will visit Carnegie Lake when the American Casting Association’s national championship is held in Pittsburgh in 2020.
Most tournament casters forgo a nimble modern graphite rod for a cheap old fiberglass rod with a slower action that puts more control in the angler’s hand. At Saturday’s tournament, Pittsburgh anglers can pay a $10 registration fee and bring their own gear or pick up a loaner rod to test their skills against Pittsburgh Casting Club members.
The Pittsburgh Casting Club meets monthly to practice at Carnegie Lake, Lakeshore Drive, Highland Park, at 6::30-8:30 p.m. on the last Thursday of the month. Get details at 412-480-6278 or eddiefishon@yahoo.com.