Fishing the Klickitat River with Jim Gallagher

This month we had 38 FFF members and guest attending our meeting. There was a very short club business discussion. Club Treasurer Doug Coe reports that the club has over $700 in our bank account (we will not give $$ details in this public forum).





After most of the dinner tables were cleared President Tyson ask Tom Craig to introduce our guest speaker for the evening. Tom had made a couple of guided fishing trips with Jim Gallagher on the Klitckitat River, and for this meeting invited him to join us with details of his guided adventures.


Jim talked with us about the fishing opportunities on the Klickitat River showing maps and slides of a number for stretches of the river that he guides on a regular basis. Even though most of his trips target trout, he said that more and more he was becoming a big fan of steelhead fishing the Klickitat. The open fishing season for the Klickitat is June 1 through November 30. Be sure to check the WA and Yakama Indian Reservation fishing regulations before hitting the river since there are some special regs that govern parts of the river. Jim reported to us that the Klickitat is best fished when the water flow is between 500-800 cfs. He pointed out that trout fishing was best during the heat of the summer months, before fishing the river one should check to see if it might be out of shape due to glacial melt. He tells us that the best time of the year for fishing the river is September and October when water flows are pretty steady, and the cooler weather stops the glacial runoff from turning the river into a milk bath.

Jim, gave us a wonderful slide show of his guiding results on the Klickitat, and passed around several fly boxes showing us his favorite trout and steelhead flies used on the Klickitat.
After our meeting, Jim was heading for the Grande Ronde River for some steelhead fishing for awhile. If you think you might be interested in booking a guided trip on the Klickitat River next year you can contact him of availability from the info of his card.


We wish to Thank You Jim for this evening's visit, information, and presentation. Good luck with you fishing excursion on the Grande Ronde.

In past years we have not held a Walla² Fly Fishers meeting during the month of December. Club officers will discuss this option for 2011 and make an email announcement to the club membership of a decision to hold a December meeting.
Happpy Holidays.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tight lines and good fishing.

Tyson Kopfer - President

Dr. Doug Coe - Treasurer

Dale McKain - Secretary

Past Presidents
Bob Long
Scott Peters

Due to Technical Difficulties

This evening the Walla² Fly Fishers had our regularly scheduled meeting at Jacobi's Café. We had six regular members and one guest from Bellevue, WA in attendance. The planned program for this evening was aquatic insect life / natural trout food, but due to technical difficulties we were unable to make all the connections with the video equipment so this program did not develop.

President Tyson, announced the chain of events that led to our program’s technical difficulties, and that club Treasurer Doug was still on holiday in Hawaii, so we did not have our planned program, or a treasurers’ report. We hope Doug will be able to join us in November to update us from our spring $$$ activities and raffle proceeds after paying for the guided fishing trip with Red’s Fly Shop on the Yakima River. It is understood that we did come out of this event with added money in the club's bank account.

Without the planned program taking place, we had a most enjoyable evening after the dinner hour with a round table discussion of individual's fishing trips. We shared past experiences, techniques of chasing various fish species with fly rod in hand, and good fishing spots we had worked through.

Tom Craig led off the discussion with his pictures of the fishing trip he and his son had Tuesday on the Klickitat River in central WA. It was a very fruitful day’s fishing for Tom and son. Tom had quite a few nice pictures (two shown here) and smiles with him this evening to show proof of their previous day's success.

Also discussed were other fishing opportunities around our area:

• Steelhead and trout fishing the Walla Walla, Touchet, Tucannon, Grande Ronde, and Umatilla rivers
• Carp fishing the Columbia River
• American Shad fishing the Columbia River

and with high hopes from September’s presentation by Dave Karl for the future of fishing Chinook and steelhead in the entire Walla Walla River system, including City Center Walla Walla. It was mentioned this has been done in Pendleton, OR by the CTUIR, so why not Walla Walla?

We also discussed that this is a busy time of the year, polishing off warm weather activities, cleaning gun for fall hunting trips, vacationing in Hawaii, and the low turnout of membership for this evening’s meeting. We discussed… if our current meeting location carried a feeling of “obligation” to buy a meal and that meal/beverage pricing maybe thinning our attendance. Since only about half the people in attendance actually make a meal purchase, we hope no one feels the need to buy anything in order to attend our club meetings. Yes, that maybe easier said than done; but the only expense for participation in our club is membership dues. We need YOUR input into these matters. Do we need to look at revamping our club’s meeting venue?

Jerry Makus has volunteered to start a telephone tree – call line to remind everyone of our next scheduled meeting of Wednesday, 9 November. We hope you will recognize his call and be able to attend our next regularly scheduled meeting. Next month we three (3) fishing guides from Central WA making our program presentation. These guy will be stopping by Walla Walla and our Walla² Fly Fishers’ meeting on their way to fish for Grande Ronde steelies. Hope to see you then.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tight lines and good fishing.

Tyson Kopfer - President

Dr. Doug Coe - Treasurer

Dale McKain - Secretary

Past Presidents
Bob Long
Scott Peters

Don’t jerk on the steelhead.

This evening we had 10 members and our guest speaker to turnout for this first scheduled autumn meeting of the Walla² Fly Fishers.

After dinner without introduction our guest speaker Dave Karl, fishery biologist with WDFW, told us of his lastest fishing adventure in Montana, which got everyone casting arm ready for his evening's presentation. This evening Dave told us a little of the fishery recovery plans for Mill Creek which runs through the city center of Walla Walla. You may have read about this project in the Sunday 18 September Union-Bulletin. Dave is very involved with this program and told us of the WDFW and CTUIR hopes of seeing steelhead and salmon again running through Walla Walla's City Center in harvestable numbers.

Not only is Dave a fishery biologist, but he is also an avid steelhead chaser with flies and rod in hand. His knowledge of the small mouth bass, salmon and steelhead fishery of eastern Washington, western Idaho, and northeast Oregon makes him a most valued info source for all anglers of our area.

This evening the jest of Dave’s discussion was detailing steelhead fishing in the above mentioned areas. He discussed the timing, places and flies of his choice for fishing Idaho’s Clearwater, Lochsa, Selway, rivers; Washington’s Grande Ronde, Columbia, Klickitat, Touchet, Tucannon, Walla Walla rivers; and Oregon’s Grande Ronde, John Day, Deschutes rivers. Dave discussion gave us about 2 hours of his many years of steelhead fishing experience, which is more than can be reported here. Below is a table of highlights of this evening’s discussion…

River	Timing	Flies – size #2 hook	Gen. Location
Clearwater	Sept – Nov	Kaufmann / other's fly patterns	Nez Perce Indian Reservation
Columbia	Oct – Nov	Egg Sucking Leech	Ringold area
Klickatat	Sept - Oct	Kaufmann / other's fly patterns	through The Canyon
Grande Ronde (WA)	Oct – Nov Dec - Jan	Green Butt Skunk, Muddler Minnow, Leeches (in winter)	Boggan’s to Shumaker and Stateline / Big Bend area
Lower Walla Walla ------------ Upper Walla Walla	Sept – Dec ---------- Dec - March	Kaufmann / other's fly patterns – Leeches – egg patterns	below Stateline Rd ---------- above Stateline Rd
Lower Touchet ------------- Upper Touchet	mid-November --------------- Jan - March	Leeches – red and orange egg pattern w/skein – shrimp	Lamar to Lukenbill Rd ------------------- Upstream of Lewis and Clark Park
Grande Ronde (OR)	late Oct – Nov - Jan	Dry flies - Leeches	OR-WA stateline to Troy

Since steelhead are anadromous, the above dates are traditional, and it is best to have a fishing contact/source of info to determine the best time to be on the water in your quest for steelies.

These are some quick reference links that might help with your steelhead chasing…

http://www.flyfishusa.com/flies/stl-wet-other-f-o.html

http://www.fun4u2do.com/Fishing-ClearwaterRiver.html

http://www.flyfishusa.com/adventure-trips/klickitat/klickitat-river.htm

http://www.gofishn.com/content/columbia-river-vantage-to-tri-cities-benton-county-washington

http://www.fun4u2do.com/Fishing-GrandeRonde.html

http://www.theflyfishingplace.com/Grande_Ronde_River.html

Another very helpful information source is the US Army Corp of Engineers / DART website for adult fish passage through the Columbia River drainage / dam(s) system. If steelies are not in the stretch of water you wish to fish, you might as well keep tying flies.

http://www.cbr.washington.edu/dart/adult_species_sum.html

Also discussed this evening was tactics and techniques for finding, and hooking steelhead. Since steelhead are anadromous, one technique does not fit all. From the time these fish leave salt water, until the end of steelhead fishing season -April 15th- in most reaches of our area, the angler has to adapt to all fishing conditions along the way. Weather and light conditions can change the "playing field" rules on a daily or hourly basis. One major trick to hooking and landing a steelhead is don't jerk on the steelie. This is easier said, than done... stay calm, let the fish take the fly, do not raise your rod tip to the sky to set the hook; wait until your reel is screaming "fish on" before setting your hook.

We wish to again thank Dave for his most informative presentation of this evening. Dave is truly a most valuable individual / WDFW asset for all the fishing public of our area. Our meeting was adjourned at 8:50 pm, with several individuals reaping a few more bits of fishing details from Dave thereafter.

The next scheduled meeting of the Walla² Fly Fishers will be Wednesday, 12 October please mark your calendars.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tight lines and good fishing.

Tyson Kopfer - President

Dr. Doug Coe - Treasurer

Dale McKain - Secretary

Past Presidents
Bob Long
Scott Peters

2011 Fly Fishing Fair at Waterbrook

Reported from notes taken, this year we had a beautiful day and a lot of fun at Waterbrook Winery and the 2011 Fly Fishing Fair. Again our group of Walla² Fly Fishers, found plenty of sunshine, fresh air, fly casting instruction, fly tying demonstrations / instructions and some really great foods.

Below is a recap of this day's events in still pictures (worth a thousand words) and a couple of live videos. Hope you will enjoy this review of our day at Waterbrook Winery.

The jest of this day's activities was to help bring our local Walla Walla Valley neighbors and families into the realm of having fun with a fly and a fly rod. The price of admission for this day of fun in the sun with a gourmet dutch oven cooked meal was FREE. The heart of our day's activity of course was helping people learn the very easy task and fine art of casting a fly to fish with a different kind of rod than most were used to.

One of our founding club members
- Skip Prictchard -
FFF Certified Casting Instructor
made casting easy for one and all interested parties.

Now, while all of this outdoor activity was going on... on the inside we had wine tasting, and fly tying demos taking place.

Again this year we were privileged to have John Spain as our chef of the day with some more of his wonderful Dutch Oven cooking to please all that joined us for lunch.

After the days major activities and lunch, there was time to sit around and compare note and tell tales of tails for the balance of the afternoon.

With all said and done we wish to say Thank You Waterbrook Winery for again allowing the Walla² Fly Fishers to share your facilities, casting pond, patio, and tasting room to have a great day sharing fly fishing with the Walla Walla Valley.

As a final note of interest, we held our club raffle for an overnight guided fishing trip for two with Joe Rotter of Red's Fly Shop and the winner was Kirk Upton. Congratulations Kirk, and we hope you found lots of Tight Lines and good fishing in the Yakima River with Joe and his crew. Just over $450 was netted for the club from this raffle.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tight lines and good fishing.

Tyson Kopfer - President

Dr. Doug Coe - Treasurer

Dale McKain - Secretary

Past Presidents
Bob Long
Scott Peters