A special thank-you to all you well-wishers out there who encouraged me  to stick with the exercise therapy prescribed for me after my total hip replacement operation and not rush into anything stupid. I did that and am now pronounced fit as a fiddle and stronger than I’ve been in quite awhile because of all the strengthening exercises and ready to renew all my outdoor activities.

          Next weekend will be our initial ice fishing excursion of the season, obviously quite a bit later than our normal hard-water getaways. Maria Voltsinis, Tas Candaras and hopefully someone else from the club will round out the excursion to our favourite trout lake in Haliburton, aptly named by Jim Lloyd as Limit Lake. As far as I know, none of our folks have been up north as of yet this winter, apparently waiting for the ‘Old Guy’ to recover and lead the way.

          Meanwhile, our gym and shop activities were looked after efficiently in my absence by Jim, Jurgen and Ray and the club never missed a step. Bo Tanaka, being so pleased with the bamboo fly rod  he built last year has his next project, our Trouter bamboo spinning rod well underway, why Jurgen has been teaching and tying his special nymphs and an assortment of other flies in the shop.

          Our ice-out spring fishing trip will be to a ‘secret’ speckled trout lake, where jurgen swears the brookies run as big as seven pounds. This one will be a camping trip on the weekend of May 26th a week after the year’s first casting competition, the Bluegrass Open in Lexington, Kentucky and a week before our own tournament, the Scarborough Open in Milliken Park.

          We are hoping to take a couple of other casters from the club along with us to Kentucky for this one. It will be good practice for us all before  our tourney and they have a great bunch of folks down there in that neck of the woods who always assist us any way they can. For example last May when I could cast the distance games, but barely make the long walk to retrieve my plugs, Bill, David or one of their other folks would make the walk and reel it in for me. Fortunately, now they won’t have to do that this year for the ‘Old Guy’.

          I have been lucky enough to have come into possession of a couple of Luxor spinning reels in excellent condition and am putting them up for auction with the bidding to end on March 8th, our next casting night at the gym. So far I have two bids - Maria Voltsinis and Paul Kennedy of $35.00 equalling the starting bid. Surprisingly, I still have several copies of the special Collector Editions of my MEMORIES OF MAGICAL WATERS left in case someone out there hasn’t picked one up yet.

          If you didn’t get a chance to read Maria’s account of our scary and exciting Ganny trip last September, my son, Ron has re-installed it on the home page of our web-site www.pathcom.com/~coachman along with pictures. Just click the link on the home page to bring it up. Thanks Ron.

          While fumbling around on my computer looking for something or another I came across this old Reel Thing bulletin and with the tournament season just around the corner thought I would copy and insert it in here as a little incentive for some of us in the Scarborough Fly and Bait Casting Association.

                                      The Reel Thing

                                             July 2001

          Not a lot to say in this bulletin except we’re proud of the results achieved by our casters in the Canadian Championships a couple of weeks ago!  Paul Kennedy, in probably his last tournament as a “B” Class caster, continued right where he left off after the Scarborough Championships.  Paul won just about everything that he could in this one:  five gold and one silver medal in the accuracy events  Obviously he also collected the All-Round Fly Accuracy, All-Round Plug Accuracy and the overall Canadian “B” Class Accuracy title as a result.  He needed assistance to carry all his medals and trophies to his car afterwards.

          Paul was not alone in the medal department.  Ray Cockburn, in his first Canadian Championships, won a silver and a bronze in “B” Class Plug Accuracy, while Sheila also collected a silver and a bronze in the “B” Class Plug Accuracy (casting against the men).  Our new “A” Class caster, Jim Lloyd in his first Canadian “A” Class entry, beat some of the much more experienced casters to win a couple of bronze medals in the accuracy flies.  For an old fellow, I had a rather good tournament as well, medalling in eight of the twelve disciplines in the all-round and winning the All-Round Plug Distance Championship.  All in all, that makes 20 medals out of the total 54 presented, to go with 4 all-round trophies collected by the Scarborough Fly and Bait Association in Pete Edwards’ version of the Canadian Casting Championships.  Way to go gang!

          Tight Lines everybody,

Gord