Fishing the Wallowa and Minam Rivers with Grant Richie

After dinner President Tom called our meeting to order at 7:05 p.m.
This evening we had 24 members and guest in attendance.
Treasurer Doug reported that we had almost $1000 in the club's bank account.
Tyson made a report of the fly fishing / tying catalog in our club's library. Any member can checkout any of the fly fishing - tying guide/aids to take home and enjoy between our monthly meetings. Please see Tyson and enjoy our library.

Tom reported that he had been fishing the lower Grand Rhonde River and the conditions there was low and slow water, a very few steelhead caught. He also reported fishing the Klickitat River for salmon and says his party caught 10 fall Chinook and 2 hatchery steelhead, he was happy with that.

This evening Mike won the door prize fly box and Roz won the raffle fly box.

For this evening's program we had Grant and Lottie Richie to join us again and gave us a tour of their new fishing guide business in Minam, OR. Grant and his family have been club members for a number of years, and in this past year he and Lottie have been able to secure the Minam Motel and the fishing guide and rafting guide business of Minam Raft Rentals. We wish him and his family lots of success as they pursue this business venture.

Grant gave us a very nice PowerPointPresentation of their business of the 2013 season of spring steelhead, and summer trout fishing the Wallowa and Minam rivers. Grant also maintains a beautiful (fishingandhiking.com) website / blog of his fly fishing adventures in NE Oregon.
Grant did give us a few tips on fishing his reach of the Wallowa and Minam river, telling us that from early September through October the dominate dry fly to use was a Stimulator to imitate the October Caddis hatch of the rivers. To catch the larger fish of those river it is best to use streamers, and one of the better trout fly nymph pattern was a Copper John.


Grant shared with us a view of his "working" fly boxes and a couple of fly fishing magazine publications that have written about his business.

If you would like to learn more of Grant and Lottie's Minam Raft Rentals business, or contact them to set up a trip in their neighborhood,  you can follow / fine them via the www by following this link --->  www.minamraftrentals.com

This evening's program was concluded about 7:45 and our meeting was adjourned at 7:50.

Due to holiday activities of the area, we will not have a monthly Walla² Fly Fishers' meeting in December. Season's Greetings and hope to see you in the 2014 New Year.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tom Craig – President
Dave Stemmer – Vice President
Doug Coe – Treasurer
Dale McKain – Secretary

Past Presidents
Tyson Kopfer
Bob Long
Scott Peters

Fall fishing with Tyson Kopfer

This evening we had 15 members present for our meeting. President Tom call the meeting to order at 7:05.
The meeting was opened with fishing reports from various members:
David said that steelhead fishing on the Clearwater was good
Tom tells us that salmon fishing at Hanford Reach was off and on, not real steady
Dave told us that the Tucannon was fishing good for trout 12"-14"
Diane said that the Touchet near Dayton was fishing well lately
Jerry Newell gave us an update on his contact with the Walla Walla VA in an effort to setup and Project Healing Waters - Fly Fishing program.

Audia won the door prize fly box. Harold won the evening's raffle fly box.



Our program this evening was given by Tyson on Fall Fly Fishing and some flies and methods to use for autumn fishing/ catching success. Tyson presentation was discussing fly presentations morning, noon, and late p.m. as we approach the closing of trout fishing season, which occurs on 31 October every year.

 

  A sampling of Tyson's "working" fly boxes.

For those who missed this month's meeting / Tyson's presentation this writer will make reference to a previous blog posting to make a show and tell presentation that runs parallel with Tyson's program of this evening.

A Blue Mountains Fly Hatch Chart
a guide for tying flies and fishing trout, steelhead, salmon
in Northeast Oregon and Southeast Washington

This evening's meeting was adjourned at 8:00.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tom Craig – President
Dave Stemmer – Vice President
Doug Coe – Treasurer
Dale McKain – Secretary

Past Presidents
Tyson Kopfer
Bob Long
Scott Peters

Project Healing Waters - Fly Fishing

Again this year our September meeting is being held on the third Wednesday of the month, as the first two week of the month are filled with the local celebration of RODEO. This writer would like to mention that the first week of September is filled with the Walla Walla Frontier Days and County Fair, and the second week of September each and every year is filled with the Pendleton Round Up.

This evening President Tom called our meeting to order at 7:05 following dinner. Tonight we had 14 members in attendance.

Tonight Treasurer Doug told us that we had over $900 in the bank and with petty cash we had over $1000 in our club treasury.
Club librarian Tyson gave us an update on the growing collection of books, CDs, DVDs and magazines we now have at our meeting-to-meeting access.
Secretary Dale reported that he was still trying to make contact with John Shewey concerning the chance of having John come to Walla Walla for a fly fishing banquet (speaker) in early 2014.

This evening we did not have a program per se but had a report

Gerald Berton Newell, 75
May 4, 1940 —  Feb. 1, 2016
Rest in Peace dear friend

from Jerry Newell who has been in contact with the local Walla Walla VA and discussed setting up a Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing program between our club and the veterans in recovery at our local VA hospital. Please follow the link attached for more details of what this VA program for healing is all about.Jerry reported that he would like to chair a committee to promote a healing program via the Walla² Fly Fishers and to date we have six (6) club members that wish to participate in helping vets learn to fly fish and tye flies as a new recreation for themselves. If you would have time to help, please follow this link about HELPING VETS with your fly fishing knowledge and/or contact Jerry at our monthly meetings and let's discuss.

The meeting this evening was adjourned about 7:50 p.m.


Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Tom Craig – President
Dave Stemmer – Vice President
Doug Coe – Treasurer
Dale McKain – Secretary

Past Presidents
Tyson Kopfer
Bob Long
Scott Peters

2013 Fly Fishing Fair

On the well groomed lawn and casting ponds of Waterbrook Winery, we conducted our 5th Annual Fly Fishing Fair.
This year our Pacific Northwest late spring weather was wet prior to the day's activity. Rivers were running too high / fast to be fished with any confidence. This morning was cool and overcast with a threat of rain in the forecast for the day. 

But it just so happened that prior to our gathering for casting instructions, the clouds parted, the sun appeared and the rest of the morning was ours to enjoy.

This year we were glad to have our own Walla² Fly Fishers founding - charter member / master-flycaster Skip Prichard to direct our casting clinic. Also we had Jim Gallagher from Cle Elum, WA the Troutwaters Fly Shop to assist with our fly casting instructions.
Because the essence of fly fishing is participation in the act of fly fishing and fly tying, this author will not try to develope a commentary here but share the action of this day with a fly rod and tying vise, with photos.

With practice on grass, fly casting falls into place

With practice over water, fly casting becomes easier and the dots begin to connect.

 

A fly fisher's choice - buy flies, or tye flies and connect all the dots when you get to fishing on the fly.

 This year Waterbrook Winery stocked their ponds with TROUT, so
when we put all of the mornings activities together we get into catching fish on the fly.

Yes, this little one caught her first trout on the fly.

And oldsters were catching trout this day.

Today lunch was dutch treat via the kitchen of Waterbrook Winery.

A good day was enjoyed by all, and all trout were released unharmed.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

~ Follow Us on Facebook ~

Tom Craig – President
Dave Stemmer – Vice President
Doug Coe – Treasurer
Dale McKain – Secretary

Past Presidents
Tyson Kopfer
Bob Long
Scott Peters

Tucannon Steelhead Management with Glen Mendle

This evening was our first gathering at the Smith's Family Restaurant banquet room. We had a good turnout for dinner, and it was again nice to have a common table to sit around and share good conversations, good food.

Tonight we had 22 members and guest in attendance of our monthly meeting. After dinner President Tom brought the meeting to order at 7:10. 

The business portion of our meeting concerned the development of our 2013 Fly Fishing Fair at Waterbrook Winery.  

It had been proposed that this year we hold this event the first Saturday of June, but due to individual’s schedules we are now looking most seriously at Saturday May 18^th. Regardless we just hope to have plenty of sunshine and no wind, the day of. This year's Fly Fishing Fair will be our 5th Annual event.

This year we are again hoping to have John Spain perform his fabulous dutch oven cookout for our lunch, and there is the possibility that Waterbrook Winery will stock trout in their pond for this affair. This appears to be coming together well, so please be in tune to the club’s  email, facebook and blog messaging for further development / announcements.   
Also discussed was the idea of working with WDFW on some area -SE Washington- fishery projects. More about this will be discussed at our April meeting.
Dale McKain also mentioned that he was continuing to try to make contact with John Shewey (fly fisher extraordinaire, author, and editor of Northwest Fly Fishing mag) and ask him about the possibility of setting a date for a club banquet. 

This evening the door prize fly box was won by Doug Coe.

Our program this evening was a presentation made by Pendleton’s fly fisher Bob Wolfe.

 His presentation was “Northeast Oregon Fly Fishing” a PPP slide show. Bob now retired was the law enforcement officer for the Umatilla National Forest for many years. He has knowledge beyond any other as to where to go, when to be on  different waters, at the right time, to hook trout on the fly in this corner of our fly fishing world. Bob again provided us with much more information than this writer can put into an honest recap of his presentation. In his presentation he pointed out many trout and steelhead fishing opportunities, stillwaters and river hot spots in NE Oregon and SE Washington. Bob presentation basically divided the National Forest and surrounding areas into sections and gave a layout of each section using maps and pictures of many of the fishable waters in Northeast Oregon and Southern Washington. Because these waters are too numerous to mention here, please use the following links to find many of the waters that Bob mentioned in his presentation.

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/RR/northeast/

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/news/2012/November/113012.asp

http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources/fishing/docs/trout_fishing_guide_to_ne_oregon.pdf

Please check the current ODFW Northeast Zone fishing regulations before you wet a fly here. There are not enough days in a fishing season to discover all of these locations, so enjoy all day Catch & Release and wait until the end of the day to take your 5-fish creel.

Bob also discussed many of his self-tyed flies that he uses in his pursuit of hooking trout. He has recently developed a fly that he calls a DB (double beaded) chironomid, using a pearl white bead instead of a stranded material for gills. 

If you would like to contact Bob Wolfe for more information please email him at...
rfwolfe_4@msn.com  
If you missed his program, we're sorry, wish you you could have been there. 

Our second fly box of the evening was won in raffle by Jerry Makus. Congratulation Jerry and Doug, hope you enjoy the wonderful flies and those nice boxes. 

Our meeting was was adjourned at 8:50 and a few folks continued to stick around to compare meeting notes and socialize.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

~ Follow Us on Facebook ~

Tom Craig – President
Dave Stemmer – Vice President
Doug Coe – Treasurer
Dale McKain – Secretary

Past Presidents
Tyson Kopfer
Bob Long
Scott Peters