Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Looking at new directions

This evening we held our meet at our new location – Jacobi's Cafe. We had 11 members in attendance. At this meeting we were planning to hold an election for a new club President, and Treasurer but with the light turnout of the evening it was decided to postpone such election until our next meeting of November 10th, hopefully while everyone is still in tune with voting in the national/our respective state elections.

For those of us that were in attendance of this meeting we found this new location to be very adequate in size and privacy. Maybe a bit fancy with linen table cloths for folk just getting out of their waders (please leave studded boots at the door) but the food, wine, beer and company is good. What more can we ask for?

This evening Treasurer Barry Gould made a monies report for our Banquet of September 18th.
The club’s treasury went into September with about $1100. Brian’s O’Keefe’s speaker’s fee / travel and board was $750, the cost of dinner came to $990. With the intake of funds from dinner reservations, raffle, and silent auction, the club now has a remaining balance in the bank of over $700. WE are in the black and still looking forward to having fun talking and practicing fly-fishing, among ourselves and other interested parties.

Other business discussed during the meeting was looking at the future and things to do.

1. Conducting a program with the Walla Walla Boy Scouts to help those kids earn their fly fishing merit badge. Scott has discussed this opportunity with the local Boy Scouts leaders.
2. Work with the Walla Walla YMCA to conduct fly fishing/ tying classes through their organization. Dale has discussed this opportunity with the Director at the YMCA.
3. Finding the opportunity to work with WDFW, on some of the projects brought up in September’s meeting with Glen Mendel and Dave Karl.
4. Do we want to restart a late fall / winter fly tying class on the forth Wednesday of the month as we had going last late winter?
5. More “in-house” fly fishing education for our club members who would like to learn more from the older “salty dogs” sitting around the table… e.i. rod works and terminology, rod / line systems, line and tippet knots, flies to use where and when, etc. There are a lot of things that some folks take for granted as to “how to, why do” that folks just getting their feet wet would like to have shared to diminish their learning curve of fly fishing.

Fishing reports from Diane and Tom revealed:

Diane had been fishing on the Grande Ronde on Sept. 18 and she is still looking for the first steelhead to land in her hands. She also did a fishing trip below McNary Dam, landed 11 of 13 sturgeon hookups and had picture to proof it. Nice.
Tom reported that he and Doug had spent a day on the Columbia Reach outside of the Hanford area, and they limited out their creel with fall Chinook. He also reported on a fishing trip he and his son had made lately to the Yakima River with great success. Tom also had picture of both outing to backup his tale of tails.

Thanks folks for sharing.

After these fishing reports there was some discussion of organizing more club trips to fish the John Day, Grande Ronde, Walla Walla and Wallowa rivers for steelhead as the 2010-11 season progresses. Hopefully before ice flows happen and then after the late winter thaw.

Future meeting program suggestions were to have Jim Galliger -fishing guide from Ellensburg- to come and make presentation on fishing the Yakima and Klickitat rivers, and asking our local professional bamboo rod builder –Chuck Irvine– to come and discuss the mechanics of fly rods, their construction, and the beauty of his bamboo rods.

There were no fly box raffles held this evening.



Tight lines and good fishing.


Walla² Fly Fishers


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

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