2010 Fly Fishers' Banquet

It was a beautiful evening, this evening when the Walla² Fly Fishers came together for our 2010 Fly Fishers' Banquet. This year we held our banquet at the Crossroads Restaurant in City Center Walla Walla, WA. Our very special guest speaker for this evening was world traveling fly fisher and photographer Brian O'Keefe.

We started our cocktail hour at 6:00 p.m. at which time the crowd begin to shuffle in and filling the room. We had a no host bar available to all. Scott and Dale sit up a couple of display tables for raffle and silent auction items.

This evening we had 38 Walla² Fly Fishers and guest for dinner, with a few folks coming in after dinner to enjoy Brian's presentation of Fly Fishing around the World.

Being that a picture is worth a thousand words, this reporter will let the following pictures tell the story and be the record of our evening's activities.

Mingling

Chatting

Making silent auction bids

Buying raffle tickets at a good price.
Tom did win the big prize of the evening.
He just keeps doing that.

Looking around the room things began to look like this a little after 6:00.

After everyone begin to settle in for the evening, dinner began to be served at 6:45 or so.

Our dinner was to have been a BBQ buffet, but since this was the very newly re-located Crossroads Restaurant they were unable to have their facilities setup for a buffet service, so we had their BBQ served via waiter/waitress in a rather crowded dinning room. Togetherness.

After dinner President Scott conducted the raffle drawings for goodies provided by FFF National and Skip Pritchard. Tom Craig won the big raffle prize of an Orvis fly box and a guided fishing trip on Mill Creek with Skip.
The silent auctions items were won by the following:

FFF 3 year membership --- Jan Atwater

Orvis fly box --- Jan Atwater

Grizzly hackle --- Jan Atwater

FFF T-shirt --- Ed Chesnut

fly tying kit --- Mike Garton

The raffle and silent auction items netted the club $468.
Thank you guys.

After the money works were over, our special fly fishing guest - Brian O'Keefe made his PowerPoint Presentation of his experiences of fly fishing around the world from the time he was a rather young man to his present day trips with a fly rod in one hand, and a camera in the other. You will find Brian's work in many of today's fly fishing magazines, and in his co-produced Catch Magazine. Brian broke down his presentation of this evening by discussing the different species of fish he had stalked and caught in his adventures to everywhere a fly rod could take him.

After Brian's presentation, Dale asked if he would tell the group of one of his most memorable fly fishing trips. He told us of a most hair-raising experience / trip to Africa, of which you will have to talk to him about the next time you see him. This reporter tells no tales.

All-in-all our evening together with each other and Brian was a great experience. We thank Brian for being with us and sharing his fly fishing experiences, we must thank FFF National and Skip for their donation of items to help fund this event and Thank you EVERYONE that joined us for the evening and those which help make it happen.

Brian invited everyone in attendance to contact him if they had any questions concerning his travels and advice of where to go, what to do, how and why.

To contact Brian you can follow these Internet links:
http://brianokeefephotos.com/

http://www.google.com/search?q=Brian+O'Keefe&ie

http://www.askaboutflyfishing.com/speakers/brian/brian.cfm

and/or email Brian @
brian@brianokeefephotos.com


Don't forget that you can also see more of Brian's work by subscribing to Catch Magazine -- FREE.
Issue #13 is great, just sign in and enjoy.

available on the Internet at this link connection...
http://www.catchmagazine.net/

OK, now looking at the banquet's bottom lines: cost was = $1754, the banquet funds intake was = $1414. So all-in-all this leaves the club's bank balance at a bit over $700 in the black. This means we had a pretty good year with a lot of good informational speakers to share their fly fishing experiences and expertise with the Walla² Fly Fishers.

Tight line and good fishing.