A History of Fly Fishing in the Northwest USA

 

This evening we had 25 members and guest in attendance of our May 10^th meeting. To date we now have 25 paid members in 2023. Club membership fee is $15 for individual or $25 for full family membership.

We still do not have a President or Vice President leading our ranks. Club Secretary -Dale and Treasurer -Harold and currently keeping records of the club’s activities.

Again this evening Ex-President Dave Stemmer and Secretary Dale McKain co-directed the meeting as MC’s. Treasurer Harold Saxby reported that we currently have over $1350 in the club checking account.

We had several business matters - questions to handle before our meeting’s program…

1) Dave asked, Do we wish to have a club meeting in June? – Not a usually scheduled meeting date.
Answer -- YES – we will have a June meeting on Wednesday the 14^th – please mark you calendars. We will be discussing some group (large or small) summer fishing outings - Please indicate on the Attendance Sign-in sheet if you will be an interested party to be contacted as outings form and carpooling is planned.

2) Dale ask if the club would agree to moving our September meeting to the third Wednesday of the month, since the second Wednesday was in conflict with the 113^th year of the Pendleton Round-Up and Dale's 70 years of attendance?
Answer -- YES – it was agreed to move our September meeting date to Wednesday the 20^th – please mark your calendars.

With this club business being taken care of, we had a small presentation from Brock Peterson – Fishery Biologist with the Tri-States Steelheaders concerning their
W² WATERSHED CREEL TOURNAMENT being held from June 1 thru July 31, 2023.
There will be OVER $300 in prizes to the top anglers of this tournament.

Click on poster to ENLARGE

-The tournament will be on the Walla Walla River, the Touchet River, and tributaries of these rivers that are legally open to fishing

-Target species: smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, walleye, northern pikeminnow, rainbow trout, brown trout, cutthroat trout, brook trout, and common carp

-Prizes will be award to the most salmonid predators caught (bass, walleye, pikeminnow) and most species caught

-The tournament will be run through the MyCatch cell phone fishing app from 
June 1 through July 31.

 Please go to their website for more information àà https://www.tristatesteelheaders.com/

Making reports for their most current fishing trips:
Harold had been on the Yakima River and had hooked into some 20" Rainbows, Diane had just gotten back from fishing the Big Hole River in Montana, and Dave was fishing the Snake River this afternoon and had caught 35-40 bass and had to stop fishing when he lost his rod and reel. He called it a good day of catching.
NOTE: We will be discussing some group (large or small) summer fishing outings during our June meeting - Please indicate on the Attendance Sign-in sheet if you will be an interested party to be contacted as outings form and carpooling is planned.

After a short discussion, we then welcomed our guest program speaker for this evening,

Dennis Dauble.

Dennis is a retired fishery scientist, educator, and outdoor writer from Richland, Washington. His topic for the evening was The History of Fly Fishing in the Western US.

Dennis has published five books about fish and fishing, and regularly writes on a wide range of natural history topics for regional newspapers and magazines.
Again because this evening's presentation was brought to us in a slide show / dimmed room lighting, Secretary Dale did not take notes of the presentation but recorded pictures of most slides – to be presented here.

Please NOTE - any and all slides can be clicked on to be ENLARGED

Please NOTE - any and all slides can be clicked on to be ENLARGED

Thank you Dennis for coming over from Richland and sharing this evening and your presentation with us.

After Dennis’s presentation we had a drawing for the fly box door prize give away for this evening.

Tonight’s meeting adjourned around 8:30.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary - Blog master

 - Contact Us -

<wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com>

 

Fly Fishing with Kyle Bratcher (ODFW) - NE Zone

 

April 12, 2023 with Kyle Bratcher - ODFW

This evening we had 27 club members and guest present. 

Since we are still without a club President and Vice President, Secretary Dale McKain and Past President Dave Stemmer were MCs for this evening program.

The evening's club business was conducted in a rather informal manner, with a briefing of current fishing trips, past events and current planned events.

Treasurer Harold Saxby stayed busy collecting membership dues, and selling Fly Box Raffle tickets. This evening we had three (3) fly boxes to distribute - one (1) for the evening door prize and two (2) for raffle tickets sold. Each box contained over $50 worth of flies. 

Before the fly box transactions, after dinner was served we had our program presentation given by Kyle Bratcher - fishery biologist with Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Enterprise Office.

Kyle and his wife are avid fly fishers

Kyle being raised in Baker, Oregon has been able to secure a job with ODFW in his home waters of Union, Baker, and Wallowa counties. A very lucky guy.

This area of NE Oregon is one of a few that has Year 

Round Open fishing season for trout.

Since this presentation was a slide show -in the dark- one had to be here to learn all that was said. We hope that these slide clips will create enough interest to cause you to want to go fishing in a corner of the Oregon Heaven.

Because this slide presentation was given in the dark, and the camera shots shown here are not of the best - clear quality, you may wish to open the program via this PDF attachment. 
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:8e5b9c55-e237-43e8-afc1-4dd6bdc13256

Kyle, we thank you so much for coming over the mountains this evening and giving us this presentation of your most favored fishing waters.

Thereafter our meeting was adjourned at 8:35.

Our next meeting, and the last before our summer "Let's go fishing" break will be Wednesday May 10th.

Respectfully submitted,

Dale McKain

Club Secretary  

Tight lines and good fishing

 - Contact Us -

<wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com>

 

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March 8th - fishing with Grant and Lottie

This evening we had 25 members and guest in attendance.

This our regularly scheduled monthly meeting -March 8- was held at our new meeting location - Chiquillas Mexican House at 428 Ash St, Walla Walla, WA. Our regularly scheduled meetings are held from September through May on the second Wednesday of the month. We have no holiday meetings from Thanksgiving thru New Year. We do have impromptu get together organized by Emails in June, July, and August, making plans to go fishing; with one and all who wish to join us.

PLEASE NOTE: our club is still looking for / asking for a couple or few individuals to stand up and fill the current openings for club officers… President, Vice President, Treasurer, and Secretary.  Currently we have no President or Vice President. Treasurer Harold and Secretary Dale have said that they will hold on, until others come forward. Secretary Dale says he will continue to “work” this club blog and the Facebook page postings, until someone else wishes to handle those monthly projects.

Will you consider helping the club by coming forward and filling these open positions? Thank you.

This March 8^th meeting Treasurer Harold was unable to attend, so no club $$ monies $$ transactions transpired.

We did have the usual fly boxes made available this month, the one for a Door Prize give away, and two for our club funding Raffle. Without our Treasurer being present we were unable to sale raffle tickets, so only had the giveaway of the one Door Prize box. 

In April we will again –with our Treasurer present– have two (2) well-dressed fly boxes for raffling prizes, and another nice Door Prize flybox. Right now EACH of these boxes are holding about $50 worth of flies.

Our meeting this evening was MC-ed by ex-President Tom Craig, 

with a little help from Secretary Dale. Topics discussed were the upcoming Walla Walla 4-H Weekend expo, where area young people are introduce to events and local organizations such as our – fly fishing and fly tying. Dale mentioned that the club had been approached by the College Place Lion Club to help conduct a similar program for the youth of College Place. Dale also mentioned that he and ex-President Dave Stemmer had discussed and would again make contact with Waterbrook Winery about sponsoring a Fly Fishing Fair on their fish ponds in early June. 

https://wallawallaflyfishers.blogspot.com/2009/08/augusts-meeting-at-waterbrook.html

This we have done years ago and can be reviewed by following the link connected to these events.

It was noted that that club dues for 2023 were now due and at last November’s meeting it was agreed that the dues would now be Fifteen dollars ($15) for an individual’s membership and Twenty-Five dollars ($25) for a full family membership.

With the subject of club dues in mind, we made a historical reflection of things the club had been involve with (group activities and events) over the past 14 years. We also discussed a few plans to try to be involved with in 2023. 

• 2023 Fly Fishing Fair – Dave and Dale will be working on this project soon - with a little help from our friends. 

• Club group fishing outings to high lakes and rivers – 
a group effort based on fishing reports –
different strokes for different folks…
trout, steelhead, and salmon fishing trips

  

• Fly Casting Clinics 

• Round Table Fly tying get togethers 

• Midweek After Work - cookouts and flotation fishing at Bennington Lake with all things being connected to our love and enthusiasm for sharing fly fishing and camaraderie - there can be some good catching evening at Bennington Lake.

NOTE: the club has a pontoon boat, two float tubes, and PFD / vests to share

 

and a library of fly fishing books and magazines. 

Dave also has asked for all veterans in the group, or outside the club that you may know of… if interested in the local Healing Waters program to contact him, or follow the link below for more information.

https://wallawallaflyfishers.blogspot.com/2014/04/project-healing-waters-with-gerald.html

This evening we had the pleasure of our used-to-be-neighbors Grant and Lottie Richie to join us, coming across the Blues in snow and cold giving our evening’s program.

Lottie and Grant own and operate Minam Store on Hwy 82 at the confluence of the Wallowa and Minam rivers and from there provide fishing guide services on these rivers and the Grande Ronde River.

From here this blog is going to take a different twist and offer YOU a YouTube video produced by Grant and Lottie of their services.
A video beautifully well done…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESYF5ewefPY

Grant and Lottie, thank you so much for braving the winter weather / road conditions and joining us for the evening.

After their presentation we did conduct a drawing for the evening’s Door Prize flybox.

Thereafter our meeting was adjourned at 8:35.

Our next regularly scheduled meeting will be April 12, 2023 at Chiquillas Mexican House at 428 Ash St, Walla Walla, WA.
Dinner gathering at 5:45 with the club's business meeting to follow at 7:00.

Respectfully submitted,

Dale McKain
Club Secretary  

 

 

Tight lines and good fishing

 - Contact Us -

<wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com>

 

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February 8th Meeting -and- we are in Search of Club Officers

Coming from Walla Walla - and all point south to Chiquillas 

This evening our regularly scheduled meetings was held at our new meeting location - Chiquillas Mexican House at 428 Ash St, Walla Walla, WA. Last month Dave and Dale contacted Chiquillas and established that we would like to have their meeting room / facilities the second Wednesday of each month September through May. We have no holiday indoor meetings from Thanksgiving thru New Year, nor in June, July, or August, as we usually making plans to go fishing; one and all. 

Again this month we conducted our meeting without any club officers leading the evening, but ex-President Dave Stemmer did step-up as Master of Ceremony to conduct the “management” of the meeting and introduced our guest speaker Chris Peery.

Our members and guest begin filtering into the Chiquillas banquet room around 5:45, as complimentary chips and salsa was being served. It was 7:05 before the first meals began to come to the tables. We have since spoken to Chiquillas that we would like to have the dinners coming to the table much sooner, so that we can conduct our business meeting without a dinner presentation taking place at the same time. They agreed. As always, the Chiquillas’ meals were delicious.  http://www.chiquillasmexicanhouse.com/menu

This evening we had 21 members and guest in attendance. 

We did pass out Door Prize Raffle tickets for a fly box, but due to the very late start with dinner service and the following program for the evening we did not get around to selling any Raffle Tickets for the other fly box. So these well stocked fly boxes will be an added feature to our March 8th meeting. We are going to have some lucky ~ happy fishers to start their 2023 fishing season with a nice assortment of these flies. Again we ask that you consider bringing TWO (2) flies
to the meeting to donate to the fly boxes – club business funds.  

 As mentioned… the Walla² Fly Fishers are currently conducting business without a full staff of club officers. Will YOU consider stepping forward and accepting a position of club leadership?
If so, please reply to our Email address...

        Walla² Fly Fishers <wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com>

to place your name in nomination. Thank you. 

Historically club officers have given two (2) years of their service to this organization. We are currently without a club President, Co-President / Vice President. Hanging on to their positions for the time being are the club’s Secretary - Dale, and club’s Treasurer - Harold with his pending resignation for the Treasurer. Our most current past officers have filled their office positions for 4-years primarily due to the pandemic gap in the club’s year and a half of non-activity. NOW is the time for some good club members (you need not be a Pro-flyfisher person) to come forward to the aid of our club... to be an officer. These are not demanding positions - showing up to moderate club meetings EIGHT (8) times in a year, and joining the group on fishing outings as one and all may wish.

Treasurer Harold did report that the club currently has $1,195.79 in our checking account, with no $$$ activity taking place at this meeting.

Tom announced that there was again going to be a 4-H Super Saturday on March 18th and asked if anyone would wish to join him is conducting demonstrations for fly casting and fly tying. We did have several people showing interest in helping with this youth event.

If you would like to join us in the activity, please see Tom Craig at our
March 8th meeting.

 

After dinner this month we welcomed Chris Peery – Senior Fisheries Biologist with the Army Corp of Engineers – Walla Walla, to give us a presentation of the History and current wellbeing on the Pacific Northwest steelhead and salmon populations. 

Chris mentioned that prior to the first salmon cannery going into operation on the Columbia River in 1866 there may have been salmon runs that one could have crossed the river on their backs. He mentioned that in 1938 the Bonneville Dam was constructed and that created an impediment to the salmon runs, and in 1962 the Ice Harbor dam was constructed on the Snake River, which also caused a loss of cold water habitat affecting the fish runs. Chris reported that of the most current years, it appears that global warming of the Pacific Ocean waters is having the greatest impact on the salmon and steelhead populations and their inland runs to ancient spawning waters. Chris also explained that these anadromous fish runs are cyclical, with good years and poor years of species return runs. Sad to say, Chris told us that in the past couple of years that the Alaska and British Columbia salmon runs (where dams do not impact) were very poor, and it is thought that this is due to warming ocean water conditions impacting the fish populations. It may be that due to constantly changing water environmental conditions, we may have seen the best of the good ole days of salmon and steelhead fishing in our local waters. Current projected returns for salmon this year is 8-16 million running the Columbia River tributaries, with 1-2 million continuing upriver to the headwaters of the Snake River.

Thank you Chris for your report, presentation to the club this evening. 

After Chris’ presentation this evening the meeting began to breakup without any further announcements or a fly box raffle or door prize giveaway taking place. These boxes will be a real prize at our March meeting, and someones fly collection for the 2023 fishing season. Tickets for the raffle box is $1 per ticket -or- $5 for six tickets. 

Right now each of these boxes are worth about $50, box and flies.

It was announced that at our next meeting on March 8^th we will have Grant and Lottie Richie giving us an updated presentation of their operations of fishing guide services they conduct on the Grande Ronde, Minam, and Wallowa rivers. 

Some of Grant's hired fish for your catching 

Meeting was adjourned at 8:39 pm.

Respectfully submitted,

Dale McKain

Club Secretary  

Tight lines and good fishing

- Contact Us -
<wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com>

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