THE
REEL THING
October 1992
Where
is everybody? We have been in our
new quarters at the Samuel Hearne Sr. school gym for over a month now and many
(in fact, most) of our members have yet to make an appearance for the
Wednesday evening sessions! Come
on, guys and gals, it's difficult to maintain enthusiasm if we don't get a
decent response from ALL our members and not just the few of us who hardly
ever mis a meeting.
Those
who have been coming out can appreciate the better lighting, easier access and
great cooperation from the school in terms of the use of the workshop, tables
and general all round appreciation of our club and its activities.
We have settled into our new agenda quite nicely with casting every
night, of course, plus fly tying every second week, alternating with rod
building lessons. There are still
one or two culms of bamboo left and all those who have already received their
bamboo from Jim Lee should be coming out before the rest of us get too far
along to catch up on the instruction and format. If you miss out on this you will be quite disappointed as the
rods turned out under this program in the past could easily command as much as
a thousand dollars if you had to buy them from commercial rod makers - and
even more importantly -they are far superior to ANYTHING you could purchase
elsewhere. The total cost in
building one of these bamboo beauties is approximately fifty dollars!
The
fly tying sessions to date featured two of my personal favourites, the Gold
Muddler and, of course, the Despair. We
will be getting instruction on the Wooly Bugger from Mike Dinner and on basics
from Dave Brown over the next while and it is to be hoped that Leon will teach
us all the secrets of building his deadly Michigan Wigglers.
Roger
Harwood, John Alexander and I tried on the BigHead River for size last week
and put together some interesting video footage of a 37 inch, 17 pound salmon
that was foolish enough to challenge us.
Paulo and I wound up the inland stream trout season with a couple of
lovely browns that provided dinners for our respective families.
Roger, John, Paulo and I have been doing our best to clean up all those
mushrooms that have been proliferating the countryside this fall. These efforts have provided some gourmet feasts for the four
of us.
As
most of you have already heard, our Kids' Fishing Day was a great success and
a vote of thanks should go to Scott Purcell, Peter Durnford and Leon Schwartz
for all their help in looking after the gang.
A usual, the trout could have been more cooperative, but enough fish
were caught by the kids to make for a most enjoyable outing and one that I am
sure they will remember for the rest of their lives.
A special thank you must go here to the Pine Valley Trout Farms for
making their splendid facility available to our club for this purpose. This is a fantastic place to wet a line and those of you who
don't spend all their angling hours on the streams, but would still like to
spend a couple of hours in a superlative location with tremendous fishing at
their fingertip, should give us a call for a brochure and the details of an
excursion to this 'TROUT HEAVEN'.
We
received a nice submission for the Reel Thing from Steve Ryder after our last
plea. Thank Steve; let's hope some others take the hint as well.
Steve
writes, "It's a damn shame that fishermen have to seemingly go out of
their way to despoil our magnificent streams, lakes and their shorelines with
styrofoam coffee cups, worm containers, beer cans and other assorted junk and
garbage. I've spent most of the
summer picking up thi crap and although I've made a few bucks on the beer cans
and bottles it saddens me when I head out for a couple hours on the water to
see all this crap all over the place. Let's
all do our part in this respect, to keep Ontario beautiful."
Well
said, Steve! Steve also passes on
his tip of the month. "Why
don't you flytyers take a moment after completing a fly - while it is still in
your vice - and sharpen the hook. It
will pay dividends in the long run.
As
most of you may have heard by now, our club is considering hosting the North
American Fly & Bait Casting Championships in 1994.
This is a week-long event and we would appreciate your input and
comments in this regard as soon as possible.
We will be having a meeting, hopefully next month to discuss this
further.
Well,
yesterday brought the first snowflurries and a reminder that winter is just
around the corner. The trout
season in Haliburton opens on January 1.
Anybody interested in a weekend trip to Windermere Lodge for a little
ice fishing and hot-tubbing? We
need at least eight to put this one together.
S.A.P. please.
Our
Christmas party this year will be held at the school - probably December 16th.
Our
in-house club tournament for members only is scheduled for November 25th.
Better come out and get in a little practice for this one.
Just
a little reminder that the club has an interesting little library of its own
that you are welcome to peruse at your leisure.
Contact John Alexander, our resident librarian.
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