Still at work on things to do in 2014

This evening at Smith's Family Restaurant in Walla Walla, President Tom called our meeting to order at 7:07.

We had 17 club members and guest in attendance.

We only had one fly box to offer the group, so this fly box of trout and steelhead flies was our evening’s FREE door prize.

Judy won the fly box this evening.

This evening’s meeting was very much a club business meeting of things happening, and things to come.

Our first order of business was shared with Kristi Bailes of Waterbrook Winery with a discussion of setting up this year’s Fly Fishing Fair. 

Kristi is currently the catering and merchandise manager for the Waterbrook Winery, and her past experience has been the manager of Red’s Fly Shop of Ellensburg, WA. We determined with Kristi that our best date for this annual event would be Saturday 14 June. Our timing for this event will be from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. For this event, again we will have fly line casting instructions, fly tying demonstrations, and fly fishing in the Waterbrook –trout– ponds.

 It was understood that the trout stocked in these ponds last year have held over and should be larger and catchable – C&R – this year. Please mark your calendar for 14 June 2014, and join us for this Fly Fishing Fair and fly fishing opportunity.

Kristi - Robin - VP Dave

Project Healing Waters Chairman Jerry, gave us an update on the development of our project with the Walla Walla VA Hospital. Even though things are moving a bit slowly with the VA, we are now a recognized affiliate with Project Healing Waters, and it looks like our first fly tying meeting with the vets at the Walla Walla VA Hospital is set for May 1^st.  

With this affiliation our club has been given access to $2000 of Project Healing Waters – National, funds to develop our program in Walla Walla. To help us get started with this project asap Co-Chairperson Diane tells us that she has access to 16 fly tying kits that she has used in the past for teaching children to tye flies. Co-Chairperson Dale reports that he has several large boxes of fly tying materials to share-donate to this cause.

Fly Fishing Banquet Chairman Dale confirmed that we are now scheduled and programing our 2014 Fly Fishing Banquet with guest speaker, author, editor, fellow fly fisher- John Shewey.

Our Fly Fishing Banquet will be held on 18 October at the Walla Walla Country Club between 5:00 and 9:00 pm. Please mark your calendars for this event and a chance to meet John. If you have one or some of the dozen fly fishing/ fly tying books he has authored, bring them with you to have signed. This banquet will be currently open to 75 guests, but may open to more as it is being considered inviting the fly fishers of Pendleton and Tri-Cities to join us; feeling that the more, the merrier.

Market's Co-Manager Robin, of the Walla Walla Farmers’ Market addressed our meeting with concern and interest in having the Walla² Fly Fishers maintaining an exposure booth for our club at the fairgrounds Farmers’ Market. 

This events begins Saturday 3 May and continues through 13 September. All those interested in being involved with this event and giving our club some public exposure please contact President Tom for more details.

Secretary Dale gave the little bit of info he had gathered from his contact with Creating Memories for Disabled Children. This organization works out of a lakeside / outdoor camp at Wallow Lake near Joseph, OR. The only communication that Dale has received to date is that the camp is closed for the season, and the owner/manager will be back in touch once an assessment has been made of lake work that might need to be done, once the weather breaks and work can be done.

One more reminder from Treasurer Doug, that everyone's annual club membership dues are due. We are no longer an affiliate of the Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF), so we do not ask that our membership pay individual dues to that organization. Our Walla² Fly Fishers' annual dues are $15 for individuals and $20 for family. If you are with us, please hand Doug your $$$$ in May. Thank You

Our meeting was adjourned shortly after 8:15.

Our next regularly scheduled meeting will be Wednesday, 14 May.

Respectively submitted,

Dale McKain

Club 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

Working on our club's 2014 Activities

This evening Vice-President Dave Stemmer brought our meeting to order at 7:20. We had 13 club members and guest in attendance.
It was mentioned that due to high water levels, high cfs flows that the club outing to the Wallowa and Minam rivers had been cancelled. This outing will try to be re-schedule with Grant Richie as soon as possible - weather and water-flows permitting. Because of the variables in weather and water conditions; the next steelhead fishing trip maybe on a drop-of-the-hat notice ~~ be prepared for an email or phone call to let you know of the time and place to head out for Minam.

Our first order of business discussed was the creation of a 2014 Fly Fishing Fair (FFF) in May or June, with hope of doing so in conjunction with Waterbrook Winery. VP Dave reported that Scott Peters probably would not be working with us on this 2014 FFF, so he would take the reins and work to make it happen. No one at this meeting knew of a contact person at Waterbrook Winery, so Dave will be going into this venture as a cold call. President Tom was not present this evening, and he has been a big player in this function in our past, so we are looking forward to his guidance / help with moving this alone. Dates discussed for this year's FFF were May 17 and May 31.

This evening's Door Prize fly box was won by Dr. Mike Garton.

Tonight Robin Saxby addressed our meeting concerning the club making a presence at this year's Walla Walla Farmers' Market at the fairgrounds. She tells us there would be no charge for our group to setup a fly fishing demo booth, and they would like for us to be able to demonstrate to their public the art and science of fly fishing and fly tying. This year the Farmers' Market will be opening the first Saturday in May and run through October. The time of operations is 9:00 am until 1:00 pm each Saturday. We would not be expected to be present each and every Saturday, but they would like to have us on the occasions when we have club members available that would wish to share their skills and knowledge of fly fishing. Robin did say, that the Farmers' Market would ask that we have a presence there on September 13th for their Kids' Day activities.


Next order of business discussed was developing a 2014 Fly Fishing Banquet (FFB) for a fall club activity. On this matter Dale McKain has been in contact with the very notable fly fisher, fly tyer, fly fishing, hunting book author, and editor of the four editions of -Northwest/Southwest/Eastern/American Fly Fishing- magazines ~~ John Shewey.

Last month during the proposed FFB discussion Dr. Doug Coe and Sheldon Haer, said they would contact the Walla Walla Country Club and The Marcus Whitman Hotel to check on accommodations and pricing. This meeting they both reported to the club that both facilities would be able to accommodate us, the price of the facility and meals, and we would need to secure our date. Last month it was decided that a May date with John was too soon to organize an adequate banquet; so Dale recontacted John and we nailed a 18 October 2014 date of availability. This date was presented to the club this evening and all were in favor of it... if we could get a facility to accommodate us.
It was also discussed how we should schedule the afternoon / evening as John said he would be willing to make a fly tying presentation the same afternoon of the evening banquet. So is was discussed to ask John to do a fly tying presentation / discussion around 5:00 pm, a social hour around 6:00 and a buffet dinner at 7:00, followed by a FFB presentation by John immediately thereafter. John has also mentioned that he would bring some of his books and be available for some book signing. John has authored at least 12 books of fly fishing and outdoor activity interest.
Dale said that as soon as we could confirm a place for this date, he would begin soliciting for FFB items from the manufacturers he once dealt with when he owned the Pendleton fly shop.
NOTE: since this meeting Dr. Doug has confirmed that the Walla Walla Country Club is available and we are booked to have our FFB there on Saturday, 18 October. Please mark you calendars and look for details to follow.

Our next order of business discussed what to develop a working relationship and program with vets at the Walla Walla Veterans' Hospital through Project Healing Waters.

Jerry Newell reported that he has stayed in contact with the lead person at the Walla Walla Veteran's Hospital, but due to a accident that individual had been side-tracked, and Jerry was making contact with the Project Healing Waters co-coordinator in Spokane. We hope to get activities going with our Walla Walla vets as soon as possible. Hopefully within weeks we will have some fly tying sessions in the works and prepare for the opening of fly fishing trout season. Club members will be notified as soon as we have this project up and going. Please have your fly tying fingers and gear ready of a drop-of-the-hat notice.

Thereafter it was discussed in ~Round Table Fashion~ places, and dates for our group to start spring trout fishing outings. Dale mentioned that John Shewey had written a couple of book / fishing guides to the waters of Oregon and Washington.

 

This evening's fly box ~ raffle was won by Dick Taylor.

 




Our meeting this evening was adjourned at 8:08 p.m.

Our next regularly scheduled monthly meeting will be Wednesday, 9 April 2014.

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

Looking at 2014 - Let's go fishing

This evening President Tom Craig called our monthly meeting to order at 7:02.
There was 21 club members and guest in attendance.
This evening we had a much smaller, a bit crowded dining room at Smith's Family Restaurant. We should be back in our regular meeting room next month.

Tom first made mention of the club's blog. There had been a remark made that this blogsite did not give enough details of all meetings' discussions. Tom pointed out that this blog was only meant to be a recap of our meetings and the club's activities, and for those that wished to have more details of club happenings, should consider being present at the club activities, as announced by email, this blogsite, our Facebook page, and local newspapers.

This evening's fly box ~ door prize was won by Rick Taylor.

Next order of business; Tom has made arrangements with fellow club member Grant Richie, to have any/all members for Walla² Fly Fishers to visit Minam and go steelhead fishing for a couple of days. The days in the plans are March 4 and 5, 2014. For those that would like to make an overnight trip out of this excursion Grant offered to give a 10% club member's discount for Minam Motel rooms and his guide services on the Wallowa and Minam rivers.
Room rates are: $69 single room -- $79 single room w/kitchen -- $89 for 2 bedroom w/kitchen.
For more details please contact President Tom <tcraig@cbfr.biz>
~or~
Minam Rentals / Motel website @-----> http://www.minamraftrentals.com/

President Tom pointed out that the Washington State Fly Fishing Fair was being held on May 3 & 4, 2014 in Ellensburg.


President Tom also brought to our attention; -Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed- being home to the largest wild salmon run and trophy rainbow trout population in the world. While living in Alaska, this area was one of his favorite fishing spots, now under consideration to be mined. Pebble Mine is not just a mine. It is to be the world’s largest open pit mine, situated immediately up-gradient of this renowned, salmon fishery that bolsters a $300 million economy on its renewable resource. Pebble Mine is the common name of a mineral exploration project investigating a very large porphyry copper, gold, and molybdenum mineral deposit in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska, near Lake Iliamna and Lake Clark. Tom ask for club members to consider joining the fight to save this area in AK, for it's natural renewable resources, instead of giving it over to corporate interest. For more details click on this website @---->; http://www.orvis.com/intro.aspx?subject=4571

Tom announced that the local Walla Walla Farmer's Market has invited our Walla² Fly Fishers to join them this 2014 season with a FREE booth location. This subject is open for further discussion, as we approach the Farmers' Market season.

This evening it was also discussed... should the club renew it's affiliation with the Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF)? Some club officers discussed this via email recently, and it was discussed with the Columbia Basin Flycasters at the Tri-Cities Sportsman show. That fly fishing club dropped their FFF affiliation some time ago. Our club officers have concluded that this club will NOT at this time renew affiliation with the FFF. All members that wish to remain members of the FFF, you are encouraged to do so, but it will no longer be a requirement for our club membership to also be a member of the FFF. Vice President Dave will be looking into acquiring liability insurance for our club and it's activities.
It was noted that the Columbia Basin Fly Casters have their monthly meetings the second Tuesday of each month, and any of our membership are invited to share an evening with them. Please see their website @----> http://columbiabasinflycasters.org/

Our next order of business discussed was the option of holding a Fly Fishing Banquet with speaker John Shewey who would be available to be with us on May 3rd.

John Shewey tying flies at the NW Fly Tyers' Expo

It was again brought up that this might be a bit too short of a time-frame to put together an adequate banquet, with all that would need to go into it. It was also pointed out that May 3rd was the Washington State Fly Fishing Fair in Ellensburg, WA ~and~ this was the same weekend for the Walla Walla Wine Spring Release. A very, very busy weekend for Washington fly fishing and wine affairs, not the best time for the Walla² Fly Fishers to add another activity to the mix. We hope to have and find a large enough banquet facility that we can invite the fly fishing clubs in Tri-Cities, Pendleton, and La Grande to join us. Therefore it was discussed that we look at a fall date late September or October, to invite John out to Walla Walla to share an evening of fly fishing. Dale said he would pursue this idea with John and hope to have an available date to discuss a fall banquet by our March meeting.

Final order of business discussed this evening the involvement of our Walla² Fly Fishers with Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing and the Walla Walla VA Hospital. Jerry Newell has been co-coordinating this discussion for several months with the VA.

This has been a club discussion over the past several months and it was agreed tonight that our club would make this commitment to setup a program with the VA hospital and start fly tying and fly fishing classes and fishing trip for those disabled veterans that would like to participate. Vice President Dave signed the paperwork to put this club's action in motion with Project Healing Waters Fly Fishing ---> https://www.projecthealingwaters.org/.
Will you join us in these endeavors?

This evening's fly box ~ raffle was won by Dr. Mike Garton.

Our meeting this evening was adjourned at 8:37 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

Stream survey - observations of Patrick Webster

 

President Tom called our meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. with some late arrivals still eating dinner, and a few others sipping on freshly poured brews, glasses of vino, and coffee; sitting around the tables. This evening we had 22 club members and guest in attendance.

I few folks gave us their current fishing reports, which in most cases the fishing / catching has been slow, but it has been the holidays season, and there is a lot of icing on the fly line this time of year.

President Tom addressed some old business - Project Healing Waters - participation was moving rather slowly as there are a few hoops the club has got to go through in order to join forces with this organization to work with, fish with, help vet in their various recovery efforts.  The biggest hurdles we have seen is to have our club classified as an IRS 501c and the liability insurance needed to involve ourselves with the Project.

Tom also brought up for thought; putting together a steelhead fishing trip based out of Grant and Lottie Richie's Minam Motel - Minam Raft Rentals / fishing guide service. Tom proposed this this trip would take place in late February or early March. Steelhead counts are usually good at that time of the years, and with the Wallowa and Minam rivers to access, and there should be plenty of opportunity for all. Tom will be in contact with Grant and will make a report at our next meeting on Wednesday 12 February.
Club Treasurer Doug gave a treasury report and tells us we have over $1000 in our bank account. Petty cash was not counted as the donation for fly box raffle tickets was still taking place at the time of his report.

President Tom then ask club Secretary Dale to come forward to give a report on the development for putting together a fly fishing banquet with flyfisherman-author-editor-flytyer and world traveler John Shewey as our MC. Dale reported that with email contact with John we had an available date of Saturday 22 February. This date and the planning/preparation needs for a banquet were discussed with the attending membership. The amount of work that we felt that would need to be done in 6½ weeks, would not give us enough time to prepare and execute this event adequately. With the decision that February 22 would not work well, Dale said he would contact John to let him know this, and see if we could come up with a later date in May or sometime thereafter in autumn 2014.  We are also hoping to invite the membership of the Pendleton, OR and Tri-Cities, WA fly fishing clubs to attend this banquet as well.

This evenings we had two nice fly boxes, and the Door Prize fly box went to Roz.

After this first fly box was given away, Secretary Dale again took the floor and made a quick announcement of the Internet activity of our club's blog posting. He announced that since he had started publishing the blog there as been 16,253 hits made to it. Looking around the world, we see hits coming from these locations...

USA	11,856	Russia	591
Germany	488	UK	215
France	213	Canada	168
Netherlands	167	Ukraine	162
Poland	101	China	95

The posting that got the single most hits was - A Blue Mountains Fly Hatch Chart - with 1979 hits to date.

Our speaker for this evening's program was Patrick Webster who works for Washington Dept. of Fish and Wildlife(WDFW), in conjunction with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation(CTUIR). Patrick's primary job is being an electro-shocker for making fish counts in the different fisheries of our immediate area. The projects / programs that Patrick are working on are the recovery of steelhead counts in the Tucannon River and the recovery of salmon in the Touchet River. Patrick was telling us of the other fish species that he had seen on his electro-shocking job sites, and he was quite surprised at the number of LARGE Bull Trout he had witnessed co-inhabiting with rainbow / steelhead trout and salmon. He indicated where some of the best Bull Trout holding waters were in our area -Bull Trout can NOT be targeted for catching- but can easily be hooked and released to comply with all WA and OR fishing regulations. This writer will not divulge these Bull Trout sighting locations here. If you wish to learn more, please attend our monthly meetings on the second Wednesdays of the month.

20" Walla Walla River Bull Trout

Patrick also told us a little of the current plans of the CTUIR and WDFW plan to release up to 100,000 Chinook smolts for the Touchet River and up to 400,000 into the Walla Walla River. Generally 1%-2% of these releases will return in 4-5 years. With the plans/hopes of WDFW to make Mill Creek in downtown Walla Walla a salmon fishery, this spring release should give us a good start.

Vice-President Dave won the fly box raffle of this evening. After these fly boxes were handed out, Dale took a moment to give the story he received from fly fisherman extraordinaire -George Cook- of how George came about developing the Popsicle steelhead flies that were included in this evening's boxes.

Our meeting this evening was adjourned at 8:07 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

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