Fly Fishing Northern Idaho with Heather Hodson

This evening President Diane called our meeting to order at 7:00 pm.

Diane wished welcome greetings to all, we had 25 members and 4 guests present.

Treasurer Harold reported that the club had over $1200 in the checking account. He told us that at the last meeting we had received $36 on the fly boxes raffle and $75 in cap sales.

Secretary Dale made a brief recap of our October 16^th meeting and again asked everyone to refer to the club blog – http://wallawallaflyfishers.blogspot.com/ – for more details. He reminded everyone that this evening was the last meeting of 2019 and our next would be in mid-January (weather permitting).

This month President Judy was "Summer Vacationing" in the Commonwealth of Australia.

Heidi announced that the ladies group of Walla² Fly Fisherwomen would be holding a meeting at Barbara’s house on December 2^nd.

This evening our guest speaker Heather drew the raffle ticket for the first choice fly box – Roz won that box.

This evening we were pleased to have Heather Hodson from Spokane as our program speaker.

Heather Hodson is the founder of United Women On The Fly.  Heather is an expert at making anglers (especially women) feel comfortable and becoming part of the fly fishing community.  Sometimes referred to as the "Middle Woman", Heather volunteers her energy and time to connect women, help start a Woman's Program or enable anglers to become more confident on the water.  Fly fishing for 13 years, Heather has dedicated her time to educate and inspire others.  She is currently studying for her Casting Instructor Certification with FlyFishers International and has been teaching fly fishing since 2014. Heather currently holds the position of Western US Women's /Diversity Ambassador for Trout Unlimited.

This evening Heather had a very educational and entertaining program on fishing the most popular trout and steelhead river of northern Idaho to include: Kelly Creek, St. Joe River, Clearwater River, No. Fork Clearwater River, Snake River and the No. Fork Coeur D'Alene River.

With each of these rivers Heather’s presentation showed us the layout of the river, maps of some of the best fishing areas, maps of her favorite campgrounds, listings of the insect hatches and their season of emergence, and in some cases the best way to rig your fly rod to best access and offer presentations to holding fish…

In the meantime, Heather kept pulling out some of her fly boxes and passed them around which made an attractive "here's what I use" presentation...

To wrap up her presentation Heather spoke about steelhead fishing, She mentioned that she and a group of fly fishing women had started their steelhead season on the Deschutes River, and caught a few steelies there.

Then she followed the run up the Snake and Clearwater rivers...

 

Please do not remove Wild Steelhead from the water - revive and keep them alive - they are precious
and fewer than ever.

After Heather's presentation we asked her to make the second drawing of the evening for the Door Prize fly box - Tim won the second box.

In Heather's off-fly-fishing-time; she is a hospital critical care nurse. This writer will ask for her by name, the next time I have to go to the hospital, feeling that she would be the best.

We wish to Thank YOU Heather, so much for making the trip from Spokane this evening, to make a presentation that made many of us want to pack our fishing gear and follow her back to fish Northern Idaho rivers. And a Thank You to our club's women members that asked Heather to be with us this evening.

Our next meeting will be held the 15th of January 2020 - Happy Holidays.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing

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Diane Briggs –  Co-President
Judy McDole – Co-President

Tyson Kopfer – Vice President

Harold Saxby – Treasurer

Dale McKain – Secretary - Blogmaster

Thoughts of PNW Steelhead fishing

This evening President Diane called our meeting to order at 7:00 pm.

We had 12 members and guest in attendance.

Diane called on Secretary Dale to refresh our memories of the business of September’s meeting. He referred to the meeting's points of interest - Secretary's Report, Treasurer's Report, a recap of our September 18th meeting survey, and business matters. He reminded everyone of this blog-site for a record of 10 years of club activities.

Club Treasurer Harold reported that we had over $1180 in our bank checking account.

Dave gave us a report on a recent fishing trip he and Tom had made on the Yakima River, Dale gave a report of a most recent trip to Anthony Lake.
Dale reminded everyone that most area (OR and WA) trout streams and rivers would be closing to fishing November 1. He also mentioned that with the very low return number of steelhead this fall, many Columbia River tributaries were being closed to steelhead fishing in WA, OR, and ID for the balance of this year.
Dale reported that the steelhead return count pass Bonneville Dam (year to date) for yesterday October 15, 2019, and the 10-year average was – Adult Steelhead 75,180 while the 10-year average for this date was 282,546. A very sad 26% return on the 10-year average.

Dale also made a brief report of what he had received from Kyle Bratcher, Acting District Fish Biologist- ODFW in Enterprise, OR this week and distributed to all WWFF via email. Kyle reported that even though the steelhead return numbers were very poor, that for the time being the Grand Ronde River basin would remain open for steelhead fishing. He mentioned that anglers should check the most current fishing regulations to determine any and all rivers being closed to steelhead fishing in Oregon.

This evening we changed the order of the meeting’s usual two (2) fly box distribution. The winner of the sold raffle tickets has first choice of the box they want; the remaining box becomes the FREE door prize of the evening.

This evening we got to try out the club’s new upgraded audio-visual projector system using member Heidi’s Trout Unlimited: - Season One DVD on the subject of Steelhead Fishing on Central Oregon’s Deschutes River. The video gave us a lot of steelhead fishing, fly tying and Redside trout catching reminiscing.

It was a very informative video, discussing the Deschutes River fishery and what the Central Oregon TU Chapter has done and is doing to help enhance the steelhead and salmon fishery in central Oregon's Maupin area.

Deschutes River - Maupin, OR area

Maupin,OR - small, very much a tourist town catering to the Deschutes River activities

River rafting ~ kayaking

Sea run steelhead - adipose fin clipped

Signal Light

Spawning Purple

Many books written of Steelhead Fly

Golden Cock

Deschutes River steelhead

Deschutes River steelhead w/Eric

Deschutes River steelhead w/Dale

Adipose FIN should be clipped / missing to legally keep-kill a steelhead

The program was strictly fly fishing for steelhead, until the producer / fisher of the video found that steelhead fishing is much more time consuming (creel count is measured in Hours per Fish) than trout fishing; so as the video ended the producer / fisher turned to using hard-tackle-lures in order to catch a returning sea-run steelhead.  Sad but True.

While using a Blue Fox treble hook spinner

Thank you Heidi, for sharing this video.

If you wish to learn more about steelhead fishing in the Columbia River basin follow this link to... Chasing Steelhead through the Pacific Northwest.

Our meeting was adjourned at 8:30.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing

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Diane Briggs –  Co-President
Judy McDole – Co-President

Tyson Kopfer – Vice President

Harold Saxby – Treasurer

Dale McKain – Secretary - Blogmaster

Dave Stemmer – PROJECT HEALING WATERS Coordinator

Our new meeting location - El Sombrero Restaurant - Walla Walla

With the closure of Smith’s Family Restaurant this past summer, President Judy made a search of local restaurants to find a new location for our monthly WWFF’s meeting. She did a great job on finding a third Wednesday of the month ~ room vacancy at the newly renovated El Sombrero Mexican Restaurant at 4 West Oak St. in downtown Walla Walla.

Prior to our monthly meetings we try to schedule a 6:00 pm Dutch-Treat dinner open to all interested fly fishers.

We start each meeting by passing out a FREE door prize ticket for a fly box. Additional raffle tickets are then available for $1 a piece or 6 for $5, as dinner is served.

Fly box #1   ---------   Fly box #2

This evening President Judy opened business meeting at 6:55 with a Welcome to All.

We had 22 members and guest in attendance tonight. Since this was the first meeting coming off our 2-month summer fishing break, we made a brief around-the-room introduction of ourselves.

Following these introductions Secretary Dale gave a brief summary of our May meetings with Rick Hafele and the status of our Treasurer’s report at that time. Dale brought up the fact that the club had purchased an 8’ Outcast pontoon boat, and President Diane had donated a float tube for all due paying club members to have access to – no charge. The club does not provide a PFD.

These watercrafts are kept under lock-&-key at Dale’s house for all members to have access to, and he ask that anyone wanting to use these watercraft, please give him a 24-hour notice (via club’s email address) so the watercraft will be unlocked upon their arrival. Dale lives ¼ mile from the intersection of Stateline Road off of WA-Hwy 125 / OR-Hwy 11 between Walla Walla and Milton-Freewater – very easy to find for all due paying members fishing in  OR or WA.
Dale concluded his Secretary's report by asking everyone to refer to this, the club's blog, and Facebook page for more details of past and current club events.

Our club Treasurer Harold gave his report on the club’s funds stating that we currently have $1250+  in the bank.

This evening VP Tyson was out-of-town so his assistant, Heidi gave a report on the progress of cataloging our club’s library and tells us that it should be showing up at our meetings again soon. When the library has been catalogued (books, magazines, video discs) these items will be available to all DUE paying members to checkout a month at a time.

Co-President Diane updated the group on some of the discussion the Board of Directors were in concerning the purchase of an updated CD/DVD video presentation apparatus, which we need badly for our meeting presentations and those of our guest speakers. 
Upcoming events for this weekend, are a planned fishing trip to Anthony Lake on Saturday, to meet with Dale at his house or at the lake, 

and another with Heidi, to conduct an outing to Jubilee Lake on Sunday. Both of these outings are -- bring your own bag lunch and catch-can when you get to the lake.

After the tables had been cleared of foods and plates, Dale and Judy passed out a membership / guest questionnaire for all to fill out to help bring our group together with ideas to fulfill individual fly fishing wants and needs. See the reply results of the questionnaire below or via this link.

 Heidi had visited our last Board of Directors meeting and told us that she had visited Graphic Apparel and talked to them about resetting the club’s logo and what the pricing would be to produce some more club caps as we have done some years ago. 

Getting a feel for this idea from tonight’s group, we asked Heidi to go ahead and place an order for a dozen logo caps. Tom and Dale also mentioned that they had also had some other apparel embroidered with the club logo a few years ago and had enjoy the clothing and the quality thereof – all available at Graphic Apparel on Rose Street in College Place.

After the discussion of club business, we went around the room sharing fishing tales that had come out of this summer’s “Let’s Go Fishing” break.

This evening we also had the pleasure of having a couple of guys from our Walla Walla Sportsman Warehouse pay us a visit. They were the floor reps for the store's Fly Fishing Department, asking how they could help our club and posing the question; Could we get together to enhance the fly fishing community with more angling training / education opportunities? 

They also brought along with them some $10 OFF coupons that were passed out to everyone at tonight's meeting.
We will be looking at opportunities to work and play with the folks at Sportsman Warehouse to share our knowledge and experience of fly fishing with their customers and the general interested public.
Lest we forget, we are about to enter the 2019-20 Fly Tying Season of "it's cold outside, too cold to fish".

Heidi is continuing to develop the fly fishing skills of her group of fly fishing women, with casting, fly tying instructions, and on-the-water experience.
Ladies if you are interested in learning more about the art and science of fly fishing with a group of women - contact Heidi at kc7ccl@gmail.com

This evening Dave and Kris won the fly boxes.

In closing this evening’s meeting the subject of steelhead fishing came up. Tom mentioned that the Tucannon River was being closed to fishing due to the low number of steelhead return this year. Dale mentioned that due to last year’s very low steelhead return numbers he had not done any steelie fishing, 

Black line is 10-year average ------- Red line is 2019
Steelhead returns at The Dalles Dam

but gave the historical migratory progression / fishing progress he had experienced in past year from the earliest fish arrival dates of mid-September into the Deschutes River, with prime November fishing at Troy, OR through the late season fishing dates of April on the Wallowa River. He mentioned that he had been in communications with the ODFW fishery biologist in Enterprise, OR last fall about the open season in that area and says he will try to re-contact those biologists about making a club meeting presentation next month before the steelhead begin to make their showing on the lower Grande Ronde River.
NOTE: Check all state Up-to-Date fishing regulations before leaving on a steelhead fishing trip.

Our meeting was adjourned at 8:00.

Our next meeting will be held Wednesday, October 16^th at El Sombrero Mexican Restaurant

Respectfully submitted,

Dale McKain

Club Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing

Contact Us

~ Follow Us on Facebook ~

Diane Briggs –  Co-President
Judy McDole – Co-President

Tyson Kopfer – Vice President

Harold Saxby – Treasurer

Dale McKain – Secretary - Blogmaster

Dave Stemmer – PROJECT HEALING WATERS Coordinator