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washingtoncountyflyfishers.com

Issue 218 August 2019

Meeting Location Westbrook Club House th 14255 SW 6 Street (one block east of SW Murray) Beaverton, OR 97005

August 2019 President’s Report

First, I want to invite everyone to our annual BBQ at the club house. Same time as in the past years: 6 PM, Wednesday August 7. This is a potluck so bring your favorite side dish. The Club will have fried chicken and ribs this year and as always there will be other good thing to eat. So ladies and gentlemen show us your best pot luck dish for this event. There will be a contest on the back lawn with a rod and reel for the winner and a big raffle for everyone else to have fun with. In addition, we will be auctioning off a 3wt. TFO Drift Rod. We were given two of these rods; one was auctioned off in May. You will now have a second chance to own a great 3 wt. rod. Washington County Flyfishers On the whole our Club is doing Officers and Board of Directors well. Membership is down President somewhat, but we are still able Chuck Cooney 503-642-2186 to do the thing the club likes to Vice President do, and that is go fishing. The George Wilson 503-524-3781 outings have been fun and Secretary members are catching fish. Galen Finn There is no outing plan for this 503-702-9603 Treasurer month due to hot weather, but John Gillingham I do know that some members 503-646-2492 are planning a carp and bass Newsletter Editor Bob Pryor event this month. Contact me 503-941-5306 for further information. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Outings Chair In June I stepped down as Paul Keefner 503-828-8400 WCFF delegate to the Oregon OR Council IFFF Representative Council of Fly Fishing Jim Crislip 503-396-1935 International. But I am happy Equipment Manager to report that Jim Crislip will Hal Gordon now be our delegate to the 503-642-1135 Membership Chair OCFFI. We’ll be looking Jim Sandberg forward to his reports from the 503-690-8865 Raffle Chair Council. Jim has worked on Ron Reinebach other parts of the Council in 503-477-6266 the past. Entertainment Chair Jim Sandberg One last note: the Door Prize at 503-690-8865 Website Manager the barbecue will be a Rod and Galen Finn Reel, so please come join us 503-702-9603 Conservation/Education Chair for this event. Tight lines. David Wesley 971-226-8211 Chuck Cooney WCFF President

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Fly Fishing International (FFI) National News: Patrick Berry is the new FFI CEO. He assumed office July 15, 2019 having extensive experience as a non-profit fundraiser. Welcome Patrick. Hope to see you in Albany, Oregon at the Northwest Fly Tiers and Fishing Exposition.

Also at last years’ National Fair Executive Board we initiated the Challenge. The challenge is 3 levels of casting skills: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. If someone has achieved the Gold Level Skills Challenge, they can judge the challenge anywhere for any group. The Executive Board set this up for casting fun anywhere. You do not need to be a Certified Casting Instructor to enter. Come try your casting skills at the 2020 NW Expo and earn your Bronze, Silver, or Gold Skills Level certificate.

At the local level, early preliminary planning for the 2020 NW Expo has begun. The first organizational meeting will be held in September. Several committee chair positions are available. We need volunteers to come help. Please contact me if you would like to help. Thank you, James Crislip

Outings Report There is no outing for August and the Board has yet to decide on September’s outing. Our July outing to East Lake had to be changed due to campground closures in the area. We later found out that the campgrounds had been opened, but by then we had already committed to an alternate outing at Lost Lake in the Mt. Hood National Forest. We needed six people to sign up for the outing and we got 13, so the outing was on! It turned out to be highly successful despite the wind and the throngs of boaters and swimmers, dogs and kids who showed up in the afternoon to enjoy the day. The setting was beautiful and the fishing good. Chuck Cooney was disappointed that he didn’t catch two dozen fish but settled for a dozen-and-a-half. We Club members stop by for a photo after a successful day on all caught fish, but some had a little more difficult time the lake: Chuck Cooney, Paul Keefner, David Ruuhela and than others as the two stories below illustrate. The first Carson Taylor. is from Ralph Neighbor. He calls his story….

The Tale of Two Flies “It was the best of times…” Chuck, thanks for picking Lost Lake. Had never been to this Lost Lake before. (Oregon has 9 Lost Lakes, 3 Lost Creeks and 1 Lost River.) Didn’t get a chance to talk with you today, so thought I’d write a report. Got to the launch a little after 9:00. Said hello to Bob Pryor. You were already out on the lake. I had decided to use my today, kind of a relic, Mountain Trader that I got from Kauffmann’s back in the ‘80s. It’s seen a lot of waters. Anyway, after battling wind in the pontoon boat at Laurance Lake opted for the old standby. Glad I did. Butt makes a fine sea anchor and hands were free to attend to fishing non-stop. Used 9 foot Sage RPL 6 wt, Hardy Prince 5/6 loaded with Wulff Triangle Taper intermediate 6/7, furled leader with ~4 feet of 4X Umpqua flouro tippet. The two flies used are pictured, a bead head bugger dark green, brown wing, with olive marabou and root beer Crystal flash tail. And my old reliable lake fly, the six-pack—this one brown with a copper bead head. Started south from the boat ramp keeping the light water to the right and dark to the left. That seemed to be the sweet spot. Got lots of strikes and landed a few ~10 inchers. By the time I reached the south bay I began to wonder if they were only pulling on the marabou and avoiding the hook. Based on that assumption I switched to the six-pack and promptly hooked another little one. The next fish hooked behaved differently. It was heavy and wanted to go a different direction, and did so with authority. After a number of jumps and runs he came to the net, but my net was too small. I tried three times to lift him onto the apron. The net opening is 16” and there was a good 6- 8” of tail hanging out the back. He was a thick heavy fish, quite red, a steelhead in appearance. Proof that the good Lord looks after his fishermen, there were two men and two small boys in a boat nearby watching. One dad hollered over that I needed a bigger net and offered his. The fish was finally landed and released, to the youngsters’ dismay. I told them that the fish would just get bigger and they could catch him someday. I thanked them all and paddled away as the dad was schooling the boys in and the strange new way of fishing with a fly. I tooled on north keeping to the sweet spot getting lots of strikes and bringing in a few of the small guys. My bladder then forced me off the lake, quartering through the windy waves, the lake becoming wider and wider before I reached the ramp at around 1:30 . It was a good day to fish.

Then there’s the other side of the coin. Sometimes things just don’t go as planned, even when you think you’ve accounted for all the contingencies. Galen Finn shares his story with us. He calls it….

A Brief Lesson from Lost Lake – Mt. Hood Sometimes it is easy to overlook the simplest things when going fishing. Take, for example, a reminder that was bestowed on me at our recent outing on Lost Lake – Mt. Hood. I was eager to get on the water early and rack up a huge total of fish for the day. After all, I hadn’t had many chances to fish this year due to an extra heavy schedule of other things going on. I launched my pontoon boat at the boat ramp with all due haste and double checked my rods, reels, flies, etc., made sure I had my inflater vest on, coffee and a Subway sandwich safely stowed in one saddlebag. I was off. Interesting to note that there was a slight but constant wind blowing already, at 7:00 in the morning. Not to worry. As things heated up it would calm down into one of those brilliant days despite the clouded overcast that obscured Mt. Hood. Things had to get better, it was July. So off I trolled over to the west side by the slide. It took much more effort than I remembered. and I had to resort to using my oars which is very unusual for me. I normally kick all the way. I did catch a decent rainbow while crossing which meant ditching the oars temporarily while I played the fish into the net. As the day progressed I found myself having to use my oars a great deal of the time to fight the persistent wind that just would not go away. I could anchor at times but the west side very quickly drops

4 into very deep water where the anchor was not of any use with just a 25 foot rope. I ended up rowing northward along the west bank, stopping occasionally to land a fish, but still kept giving the oars a workout. I finally got to the area where the fish were near the “cabin” as we call it… the lone building on the far west side of the lake. Despite the wind, fish were biting and things were looking good. Then it happened. As I was rowing, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that my right oar was slipping out of the oar lock and headed for the water. I quickly had to stop rowing and make a grab for the oar and oar stop before they went overboard. My oars are aluminum tubing and a plastic paddle. With the wind blowing I suddenly became worried that I might not be able to control my pontoon boat with just my fins and one oar. I pulled my oar onto the boat and rested it across my lap. I was kicking with my fins to try to hold station, but was not doing too well. I was slowly drifting south along the lake; not where I wanted to go. I had the oar stop collar, but I could not get it back on the plastic wear strip that was glued to the oar in the area where it was slid through the oar lock. Try as I might, I could not get it to slip back on. No problem, I will just grab my Leatherman and loosed the two Phillips screws that make it adjustable. A quick search of my saddlebags reminded me I had taken it out and put it in my wading vest and failed to put it in my inflator vest. What about my rusty old multi-screwdriver that was always in my saddlebag? Nope. It was taken out to clean it at the end of last season and never made its way back. What to do? Luckily there were other flyfishers in their pontoon boats around me. I kicked over to a couple of them and asked if I could borrow a Leatherman or Phillips to fix my oar. They searched and didn’t have anything either. I could see the rest of my flyfishing day going up in smoke as I struggled to work my way all the way across the lake with the wind blowing at a bad angle to the boat ramp. Finally my day was saved by a guy and his daughter in a drift boat. He had a bright and shiny Leatherman he offered me to use. While I worked on my oar I found out he was from Oregon City. I shared info about the club and found out he had not been having any luck with the fishing. I eagerly gave him some advice on moving in closer to the transition and what flies I had been using to catch fish. He thanked me, I thanked him, and we parted ways. As I was pulling away from him I caught two more fish in rapid succession and he followed me over to the “hot spot’. Lesson ONE: Check your oars and make sure they are in good working order because you never know when you will need them more than you expect. Lesson TWO: Always carry at least some rudimentary tools with you, like a Leatherman, or a multi- screwdriver and a pair of pliers. You might just find them saving a day of fishing on a high mountain lake.

[Editor’s note: A similar thing happened to me on the lake. I didn’t check my oars before I went out. The screws had not been tightened and fell off into the water. I had nothing to replace them and spent the morning fishing with my oars across my lap. But I still caught some fish. Any day I catch fish is a good day! Actually, any day I can get out onto the water is a good day. If you have stories (or photos) of your fishing adventures and would like to see them published in the Flyline, please send them along to Woody and me.]

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Fly of the Month RiverKeeper Callibaetis Emerger By John Kreft johnkreft.com/lake-flies/riverkeeper- callibaetis-emerger/ Here is the fly pattern sheet for the RiverKeeper Callibaetis Emerger. The fly is designed to imitate the wings pulling out of the nymphal shuck before the dun flies off the water. The fly sits in the surface film.

Category Trout How to tie: Hook Daiichi 1319, Dai Riki 305 1. Attach thread. or TMC 102Y, #12-16 2. Tie in Wood duck fibers for tail. Thread Rust or Tan Tail Wood duck fibers 3. Tie in copper wire ribbing. Rib Copper wire – small 4. Dub Superfine and wind forward to thorax Body Superfine dubbing – creating tapered body. Callibaetis 5. Bring ribbing forward with 4 to 5 wraps. Wing CDC - tan 6. Tie in 2 or 3 CDC feathers with 2 soft thread wraps. Pull CDC stems to adjust the wing length from 1/2 to a full body length, depending upon desired length. 7. Whip finish.

Note: Use #12 for early season fishing, #14 for mid-season, and #16 in the fall.

If you’d like more information on CDC, check out John Kreft’s blog - Use Fly Patterns with CDC Feathers

To learn more about the real bugs, visit Kreft’s blog - Callibaetis Mayflies.

[Editor’s note:] In July, our Fly of the Month was the Sheep Creek Special. We neglected to give credit to the fly’s original creator, John Kreft at johnkreft.com. We regret the error.

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11429 SW Scholls Ferry Road, Beaverton, OR 97008. Phone (503) 579-5176. Fax (503) 579-4935. Hours: 10 AM – 6 PM Tuesday through Saturday; 10 AM – 5 PM Sunday. Monday: “Gone Fishing”

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