FFI’s CI Study Guide is the document the certification programme tells candidates to work from. The February 25, 2025 edition runs to 63 pages and covers both halves of the exam: it states that it “includes information that will be covered in the written exam. If you have mastered the material in this guide, you should know the answers to the written exam.”

Download the study guide (PDF, 2.4 MB) · original on flyfishersinternational.org

How to use it

1. Read it once, end to end, without stopping to memorise.
2. Then work Chapter 2 (casting mechanics) until you can explain each of the Five Essentials in one sentence and demonstrate it.
3. Answer every question in Appendix D in writing.
4. Drill the fault lists in Chapter 5 with the Six-Step Method for correction.
5. Use Chapter 7 as a task-by-task checklist against the 22 exam task pages.
6. Finish with Appendix E (test day) before you book.

What is in it

The Five Essentials, as the guide states them

The guide reproduces Bruce Richards’ Gammel’s Five Essentials Revisited (The Loop, Fall 2023), which modernises Bill and Jay Gammel’s original 1990 list using the current FFI definitions:

1. Move the rod tip in a straight line. The guide calls this “what results when the other four essentials are done properly” — a straight tip path gives the narrow loop with a straight fly leg that is most efficient and most accurate.
2. The casting arc must vary with the degree to which the rod bends — not simply with line length, since force matters as much as mass. Too wide an arc for the bend gives an upward-curving tip path and a wide loop; too narrow an arc makes the tip dip and produces a tailing loop.
3. Power must be applied in the proper amount at the proper place in the stroke — an evenly increasing rate of acceleration, not a jab at the start or the end.
4. Slack line should be kept to an absolute minimum — a straight line at the start of the stroke is what lets the rod bend against line mass and transfer energy.
5. There must be a pause between strokes, varying with the amount of line outside the rod tip — and with line speed: the faster the line, the shorter the pause.

Appendices worth knowing

• A — Horizontal Casting Drill: the drill for seeing your own tip path and loop.
• C — Lesson Plan Examples: models for the Part Two teaching tasks.
• D — Review Questions: the written-exam question bank, organised by topic; see the paper exam page.
• E — Test Day: scouting the venue, setting the course, wind direction, do-overs.
• F — Resources: the guide’s own reading list.

Reproduced here as a study index for personal use. The guide is FFI’s copyright; read the original.