Wednesday, January 13, 2010

A winter's gathering of the Walla² Fly Fishers

This evening the Walla² Fly Fishers came together with Carl Johnson, Washington State FFF Council President. Carl calls the west side of WA home, but also has a second home in Montana, so he has plenty of fly fishing experiences to talk about as he travels/fishes across the Pacific Northwest.

Prior to this month's meeting, we once again had a pleasant dinner together with about 15 fly fishers breaking bread, fish, chicken, Chinese noodles, stir fried rice, etc. together. Carl was at the China Buffet when most of us got there, so we had the entire evening to enjoy our visit with him. Our dinner socialization hour includes the sharing of fish tales, past and current, as well as just visiting with new found fly fishing/club friends.

After we move from the dining room into the banquet room of China Buffet, we proceeded to pull out the flies to decorate the evening's fly boxes to be given/raffled away.

This evening we had 25 people present for this January meeting, and as a couple of guys went around the room with a roll of raffle tickets in their hands giving away door prize tickets and peddling tickets to raffle off the other fly boxes and a FFF -gifted- fly rod.
~~~~~~~~~
Our club is to receive from the Federation a fly rod from the Lefty Kreh’s TiCR X Rod Series ---
a TFO 5904TX
(9’ 4 pc 5 wt)
-or-
a TFO 08904TX
(9’ 4 pc 8 wt)
for bringing on board 18 new FFF members. Club President Scott pointed out that since the Walla² Fly Fishers is a FFF Charter Club, (meaning all Walla² Fly Fishers members are also Federation of Fly Fishers members) that this rod raffle would be opened to card carrying FFF members only. Next month we will be drawing the ticket of the winner of the rod, and the winner of that raffle would have her/his option of picking the rod of their choice for their individual fly fishing needs.
This rod opportunity will be drawn for during our February 10th meeting, if we can sell 100 tickets by that time.
~~~~~~~~~
After all the ticket business settled down, we held the drawing for the fly box door prize and Scott Peters won that.

President Scott Peters called the meeting to order at 7:15 p.m. The club's business of the evening that were discussed was, thoughts for future meeting programs, the attempt to have Brian O'Keefe to come to our April meeting/ banquet, and the slight discussion of seeking new club officers. Our first year/one year of functionality with officers -- President Scott, Co-President Skip, and Secretary Dale will be wrapping up in a few months. These guys took their respective club positions with the understanding that they would work on getting the club up and running, with anticipation that in a year of so, other helping hands would step forward and offer new leadership. It was good to have Carl present at this meeting to bring out some point to help us in the continuing development of our club, its membership, and it's association with the Washington Council.
It was also discussed the survey that Dale had passed around concerning the establishing of a club membership fly tying workshop for the winter of 2010. There was 10-12 individuals that expressed interest in creating such a workshop and by a membership vote it was decided to choose the 4th Wednesday of the month for January, February, March and maybe April to conduct such a "come as you are" workshop. Our first fly tying workshop will be Wednesday, 27 January from 7 to 9 p.m., watch your email connection for details.

Thereafter Carl gave us his presentation concerning the creation, formation, and organization of the Federation of Fly Fishers. Due to technical difficulties Carl's show & tell PowerPoint program would not project, so his presentation from was from his mastery of memory of the FFF. In a nutshell, the FFF was started by the Mackenzie Fly Fishers of Eugene, OR in association with the Evergreen club of the Seattle, WA area. There first "organizational" meet was a steelhead fishing trip on the Grande Ronde River near Troy, OR. As it was first set up, the FFF was a loose knit organization of a group of fly fishing clubs around the Pacific Northwest. Over the past fifty years it has become a solid organization of international scope in developing the art and science of fly fishing and fly tying. Unlike many other fishing organizations, the FFF is an organization that embraces all fishing, in all waters, this the practice of catch and release in mind at all times.
"Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once." - Lee Wulff (a founder of the FFF)

Following Carl's presentation we had one more pass around the room with the raffle tickets for the next two fly boxes to be raffled and the Lefty Kreh’s TiCR X Fly Rods. Barry Gould and Doug Coe won the fly boxes, and the rod winner will be drawn at our February 10th meeting.

This meeting was adjourned shortly after 8:30 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary




Tight lines and good fishing.


Walla² Fly Fishers


Scott Peters - President
Skip Pritchard - Co-President
Barry Gould - Treasurer
Dale McKain - Secretary /
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