History
As a competitive sport, casting is to fishing as skeet and trap shooting are to hunting. It originated as a way of getting the bait to the fish. It was a skill that had to be practised and, when two or more fishermen were practising together, it undoubtedly led to friendly competition which, in turn, eventually led to formal competition.
Although little known to the general public, casting is actually one of America's oldest organized sports. The New York Sportsmen's Club began holding an annual fly casting tournament in 1861, thirty years before basketball was invented.
Fly casting had been introduced to the United States by fishermen from England and Ireland. Bait casting, using artificial lures, became a competitive event only in 1882, when the National Rod and Reel Club (NRRC) began holding tournaments.
The first truly national tournament was staged by the Chicago Fly-Casting Club as part of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Other NRRC member clubs hosted national championship events over the next 13 years. The tournament was held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 1906, when the National Association of Scientific Angling Clubs (NASAC) was founded to oversee the sport.
The NASAC became the National Association of Angling and Casting Clubs (NAACC) in 1939 and the American Casting Association (ACA) in 1960.
Competitive casting may have begun in England, on a small, local scale, as early as the mid-18th century. The first national tournament was conducted in 1881 by the Fishing Gazette. From England, casting as a competitive sport moved into several Northern European countries early in the 20th century.
However, casting didn't become an international sport until after World War II. In 1953, the NAACC invited several other national casting organizations to form a world-wide federation. As a result, the International Casting Federation (ICF) was founded in January 1954. The original members were Australia, Belgium, England, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, Sweden, and the United States.
The ICF conducted the first world championship tournament at Kiel, Germany, in 1957. The international picture became confused in 1960, when the Confédération Internationale De La Pêche Sportive (CIPS) formed its own affiliate, the Federation of Casting Sport (FCS), which also staged world championships.
In 1970, the two organizations got together to host a joint world championship tournament in Kalmar, Sweden. They went back to separate tournaments for seven years, then held another joint championship in 1978. The world championship tournament has been biennial since then.
The ICF became known as the International Casting Sport Federation (ICSF) in 2003. There are two basic types of casting competition, distance and accuracy, and four basic kinds of tackle: fly, bait, spin casting, and spinning.