Five weeks of Steelhead fishing left...

It has now been just over a year that the core of the Walla² Fly Fishers came together and talked about forming a fly fishing club in the Walla Walla, WA / Milton-Freewater, OR area. That first "club" meeting was instigated by our club's Co-President Skip Pritchard and held on March 4, 2009. At that meeting we had 11 interested individuals to show up, mostly by word-of-mouth. It is good to see regular faces/new faces each month, let's keep up the good work, the good times coming. Thank you everyone for making this happen.

Again this evening we had about 11 club members and guest come together for our pre-meeting dinner. This evening's mealtime gathering was a great time for sharing our recent and long past fishing experiences, friendships.
By the time our 7:00 p.m. meeting started we had 30 interested fly fishers / club members in attendance. President Scott just prior to the evening's business discussion, passed out the door prize tickets to everyone for this evening's fly box give-away. Robert Sallee, won the door prize fly box.
Club business discussed this evening was:

• FFF fly rod raffle – we are waiting to hear from FFF National concerning the option of having a greater choice of fly rods for this raffle (we are asking for a choice of a 2wt. thru 12wt. rod, since so many club members own 5 & 8wt. rods)

• Fall Banquet – have not yet heard back from Brian O’Keefe to confirm a date for this event (he has been fishing in Chile)

• Fly Fishing Fair – it has been confirmed that May 22, 2010 will be the date we plan to hold our 2nd Annual Fly Fishing Fair at Waterbrook Winery. Please mark your calendar for this event of fly fishing, fly tying, free Dutch Oven cooked luncheon, and vino tasting. Come one, come all and enjoy.

After these discussions, our guest speaker - Mac Huff of the Eagle Cap Fishing Guides service out of Joseph, OR gave us the evening's presentation on Steelhead Fly Fishing Techniques .
His PowerPoint presentation showed how to read the water for steelhead holding lies, how to make a fly presentation to steelhead via the

• Wet fly swing
• Dead drifting a fly using a strike indicator
• Greased line presentation

with some discussion on using a Spey rod and about skating flies for steelhead surface takes. Mac also told us of his version for tying a Turle knot for an under water broadside fly presentation. You will need to contact Mac for more details on his line-to-fly riffle hitch knot to make the fly stay on the surface.

Mac pointed out that the above methods of steelhead fishing, are much the same as those used for trout fishing, but the steelhead take is usually much lighter/softer, with a hardy hard strip-your-line off the reel run following the take and set of the fly in their hard mouth/ jaw.
With Mac's 25+ years of steelhead fishing northeast Oregon's Wallowa Country, he gave us quite a few tips for going after and catching the BIG ones. With this evening's presentation Mac did handle allot of Q&A's concerning steelhead fishing. Thanks Mac.

If you would like to reach Mac concerning some fly fishing guide service on the Grande Ronde, Wallowa, Imnaha rivers -or- general how-to fly fishing instructions while on the river, you can click on his website link above, give him a call or email from this card info...
This writer, can say from his experience of fishing with Mac that there is allot of knowledge to reap by spending a day on the water in the Wallowa Country with Mac.

Thank YOU Mac for traveling the distance and giving us a most informative program on smoothing out some possible rough edges around the science and art of fly fishing for steelhead.

After our evening's program, Scott and Barry went to selling raffle tickets for the second fly box of the evening of which Candace and Bob Pekich won that box.

This evening's meeting was adjourned shortly before 9:00 p.m.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary

Tight lines and good fishing.

Walla² Fly Fishers

Contact Us

Scott Peters - President

Skip Pritchard - Co-President
Barry Gould - Treasurer
Dale McKain - Secretary /Blog Master