Thursday, September 21, 2023

September 20 - Ready or not here it comes- 4" of September snowfall on the high lakes!

  A gathering of fly fishers


This evening after dinner our meeting was called to "order" at 7:00 by the evening's emcee - Dave.

During dinner, most of the discussions were of summer fishing outings and catching. So after dinner the order of business was rather short.

It was announce and discussed that our Treasurer Harold, had recently undergone surgery and was expected to have a rather lengthy recover period. 
Harold had previously given his Notice of Resignation as Treasurer, but would stay on until a good club's money / bookkeeper would fill his shoes. Now is the time for One Good individual to come forward to handle our club's treasury, as Harold has now had to give up that responsibility.
Harold, Thank You for the years of service that you have given our club.
Get well soon, our thoughts and prayers are for your speedy recovery.

This evening we had 10 members in attendance. Without a Treasurer being present we did not have our usually transactions with fly donations - door prize, or fly box raffle.

With some members -other obligations- it was discussed and decided that next month OCTOBER that we would again hold our monthly meeting on the THIRD Wednesday of the month -- the 18th. Please mark your calendars accordingly.

Also discussed was a meeting plan - program for November 15th. Currently thoughts are to have a SWAP Meeting. A meeting to buy-sale-trade those Fly Fishing goods that you haven't used in awhile. NO JUNK PLEASE, just used and unused goodies that you no longer have use for. What to you think?

With the low membership turnout tonight, we were thinking that many of you have made a last-ditch-effort to make an end of Summer fishing trip and gotten snowbound. It was announce that yesterday there was a FRESH 4" snowfall that covered the Elk Horn Mtns. - Anthony Lake, a favorite fishing hole and summer cooling off spot, holding large triploid rainbows* for many of us.      

with snowfall September 21 8:11 am
 
Mid-summer catching on Anthony Lake
With the onset of Autumn -shorter, cooler days- catching can be good here.


a typical October 18th catch of FIVE (5) 12" to 20" triploid rainbows*


Now to discuss the urgent business at hand... Will YOU step forward and share your time and effort as a Club Officer? You will not be alone.
The job might consume 1 or 2 of your month's waking hours, and the time to attend a meeting; with summer fishing months - time OFF.

Please mark your calendars for our next meeting -October 18th-    at Chiquillas Mexican House 428 Ash St, Walla Walla, WA.
Dinner orders being placed/starting at 5:45 pm with business meeting / program to follow at 7:00.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary  


Tight lines and good fishing


- Contact Us -

<wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com>

* “triploid” trout are normal rainbows that have been modified to be sterile, but are otherwise identical to other rainbow trout. They look, fight, and taste just the same. With no ability to reproduce, triploids focus all of their energy on eating and growing large — sometimes to exaggerated proportions.

https://www.fishuntamed.com/blog/what-is-a-triploid-trout








Tuesday, June 20, 2023

June 14 - Before our summer fishing trips

 


This year we voted in May to plug in one more meeting before our Summer Break - fishing trips.
This evening we had 17 members and guest in attendance. 

We had no formal meeting program scheduled, so with Dale emceeing the evening we share dinner together and discussed plans to go fishing during the summer. Several folks had already started their summer fishing season, and gave us a report on their results.
No one was asked to detail exactly which rocks in the streams, or which hole in their favorite lake had always surrendered their best catches.

Treasurer Harold reported that we currently have $1,506.77 in our club's checking account.

If you are interested in joining us for our next club meeting - September is the THIRD Wednesday 9/20 being there are a lot of other area activities earlier in the month.

Places to go wet your fly in 2023...








Fishing reports of places to go fishing - https://www.washingtonfishreports.com/spots/index.php

Hope to see you at our next meeting September 20th at... Chiquillas Mexican House at 428 Ash St, Walla Walla, WA.

Respectfully submitted,
Dale McKain
Club Secretary  


Tight lines and good fishing











Friday, May 12, 2023

A History of Fly Fishing in the Northwest USA

 

This evening we had 25 members and guest in attendance of our May 10th 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 14th – 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 113th 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 20th – 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
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>

 

Wednesday, April 19, 2023

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  







Monday, March 13, 2023

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 8th 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. 
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.


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…

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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