Walla² Fly Fishers: Our new meeting location - El Sombrero Restaurant

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^that El Sombrero Mexican Restaurant

Respectfully submitted,

Dale McKain

Club Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing