The CI Study Guide (February 2025)

Fly Fishers International’s Study Guide for CICP Casting Instructor Certification Exam, dated 25 February 2025 — 63 pages, and the document the CI section of this site is built around. It is now a small website: the whole text, chapter by chapter, a few hundred kilobytes instead of a 2.4 MB file, with no reader to load and no page to zoom.

It is a guide for candidates rather than a casting manual. The first half is casting: the Five Essentials, casting arc and trajectory, watching a loop, identifying faults. The second half is the exam: preparing, the performance tasks, teaching tasks, and teaching principles. The appendices hold the horizontal casting drill, lesson-plan examples, the 33 review questions and the test-day checklist.

Two things to know before you read:

The graphics come with it. The guide leans on numbered graphics (“see Graphic 4A”); all twenty-three are in these chapters, in place, at full size. Click one to enlarge it.
This is the FFI document, unabridged. Nothing has been rewritten or reordered, and nothing has been left out: the chapters were checked line by line against the PDF. Where a sentence referred to the older edition of the exam, it is left exactly as FFI wrote it.

The original PDF — the same words and pictures, for printing — is in the CI study material library: CI Study Guide, February 2025 (2.4 MB, 63 pages). The Basics section has the Appendix D questions as cards, with answers and sources.

1. Introduction Congratulations on your decision to pursue the Casting Instructor (CI) certification.
2. Casting mechanics and techniques Below are two articles authored by Bruce Richards, MCI that appeared in previous editions of The Loop.
3. Substance and style The substance of a fly cast is directly related to the Five Essentials.
4. Learning to see the cast Learning to see and diagnose casts is the first step toward fully understanding casting mechanics.
5. Fault identification and the Five Essentials Understanding casting faults begins with careful observation of fly line loops and fly rod and body movements.
6. Preparing for the performance exam The CI exam tasks do not require any special gear, but it makes sense to optimize what you use to make task…
7. Performance and teaching tips 2m), demonstrate a minimum of six false casts with narrow loops on both the forward and back casts.
8. Teaching principles In the Spring 1998 issue of The Loop, Mel Krieger wrote that “…instruction provides avenues for learners.
Appendix A — Horizontal casting drill *Casting arcs may vary depending on the rod/fly line combination and the amount of force applied to the cast.
Appendix B — Teaching The following two sections on teaching methodology have been adopted from the CI Study Guide dated March 31, 2016.
Appendix C — Lesson plan examples Describe the Purpose of the Pick-up and Lay Down Cast is to simply present the fly to a fish or to slightly change…
Appendix D — Review questions As you prepare for the exam the following questions can guide you in organizing your understanding of each exam task.
Appendix E — Test day Before Exam Day Scout out the location.
Appendix F — Resources org - FFI Online Webinars https://www.