General Meeting, June 25th at 7pm

Come join us at the Edmonds Senior Center as we welcome back Leland Miyawaki on Wednesday, June 25th at 7 pm.When he isn’t working part-time at Orvis in Bellevue, you can find Leland fishing and guiding on the local Puget Sound and British Columbia beaches. As Leland says, “fishermen usually focus only on salmon and steelhead when they think about fishing in the saltwater of Western Washington, but you can fish for native trout all-year round with a fly rod. It’s a great opportunity and a uniquely Northwest experience.”
He’ll discuss his surface fly the “Miyawaki Beach Popper” that he uses to catch those wild coastal cutthroat trout and he’ll even tie flies. Hope to see as many as possible show up for this special presentation. We will have a fly rod raffle to participate in as well.

Willlow Creek Hatchery Open House and June 25th General Meeting

We will again be hosting our Annual Open House in conjunction with the Edmond's Waterfront Festival May 31 and June 1 from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. We will have our kids fishing pond ready for your young anglers to try their luck, hatchery tours and feeding the young salmon in the rearing pond. We will also have a raffle for kids fishing gear and maybe even a nice fly rod for the more experienced. Please plan to attend with your kids and grandkids and if you are so inclined we also could use some volunteers to work each day with helping the kids fish, cleaning, setup and take down. If interested in volunteering let Gary McConaghy know at 206-354-0877.
For our June 25th General Meeting we are very excited to have back Leland Miyawaki from Orvis in Bellevue to talk about beach fly fishing in the Puget Sound. Leland always gives a great presentation and has a lot of wonderful information about being able to fish in the sound even if you don't have a boat. More about his presentation latter but wanted you to be aware and mark your calendars to attend.

2014 Update

2014 Program update and meeting schedule. The fish have been moved into the pond and are thriving, thanks to the volunteer feeders and the expertise of Walter, Ray and crew. The same can be said for the Coho currently residing in the net pen at the Edmonds Fishing Pier.
We will have a revised schedule for our General Meetings this year with the next one being on Wednesday April 23rd at the Edmonds Senior Center. Our speaker will be Ron Gardner, who has given us this information about his expertise and experience:

My name is Ron Garner and I've always loved to fish. The waters in Washington have more opportunity than hardly anyone realizes. In our beautiful state, I have landed many, many kings from 30-50 pound kings, High teen to 20+ pound Coho, Lingcod to 50 pounds, and several mid hundred pound halibut. Most think you have to go to Alaska or BC to catch this quality of fish. Not so.

After years of fishing and watching our fisheries shorten, I rolled up my sleeves. I got involved with WDFW in the studies of our fish and shellfish to understand how they all interact as well as how many we can take effectively without harming the resource. I worked with many WDFW staff in decision making. Today most of those staff are running the agency. What I have found is that there is never a real clear one size fits all answer for our fisheries. That includes managing the same fisheries year after year.

My love for the sport and wanting to see our fisheries come back to historical levels is my driver. Future generations need to have what we have.

But to excel you need to learn that each type of fish is different and lives different. This is where the challenge comes in. After studying their habits and what they eat you can start to piece together a game plan on how to manage them and most of all, Catch Them!

Not many know that 5 of us met in Port Angeles in 2003 and hammered out the strait halibut fishery proposal that we enjoy today. We had it moved it forward from June to April when the fish are in. Understanding these fish come in and leave at certain times of the year, helps to understand how to catch them. This has been the driver of having great results.

I am a structure studying nut. I have thousands of hours of studying marine charts. I paid attention to what we were catching on what type of structure and its layout.  In the beginning fishing the ocean, I paid attention of where our hot spots were, their shape, depth, forage, kelp, and what the bottom is made of. In finding certain fish you can figure out where halibut, lingcod, rockfish, cabezon, and even shrimp and crab are.  From this I have discovered many halibut fishing holes that no one knows about in the ocean and even inside. There are techniques that will put you on more fish that I will be showing you. You will go away with a better understanding of where to find halibut and why. 

In addition to Ron's talk, we will also have a raffle. 

As for the schedule for the balance of the year, we will have general meeting on 6/25, 9/24 & 11/19. We will also be holding our Open House in conjunction with the Edmonds Waterfront Festival 5/30 & 6/1 and we hope to see a lot of your attend and or volunteer to help out. We will hold our summer BBQ and auction at the Hatchery on Wednesday August 6th.

November General Meeting & Newsletter Editor Needed

 

The next General Meeting for the Edmonds Salmon Chapter of Trout Unlimited will be November 20th at 7:00 PM at the Edmonds Senior Center. We will be showing the video "Where the Yellowstone Goes" and we can promise that the previous issues have been resolved and the video will air in it's entirety. Again we apologize for the problems at the last meeting and hope you will attend for this very entertaining video.
We will also be holding elections for the 2014 Board of Directors. If there are any members who would like to nominate another member or themselves for the Board please attend and make your wishes known.
The Board of Directors has also authorized the hiring of a Newsletter editor to write and assemble a quarterly Newsletter for our Chapter. The preference would be to find a member that has the experience and understanding for this type of work to be hired. If you have this type of experience and are interested in find out more about it, contact Gary McConaghy @ 206-354-0877 or email: gmccona@gmail.com

Sept 25th General Meeting and Movie Showing

We will be showing a special presentation of “Where the Yellowstone Goes” described below as well as have some of our members give tips and tricks to catching your limit in the waters in front of Edmonds. We hope you’ll be able to join us for this event starting at 7:00 PM at the Edmonds Senior Center, 220 Railroad Ave. Edmonds

Feel free to bring along a guest who might enjoy seeing this film.

 

Where the Yellowstone Goes follows a 30-day drift boat journey down the longest undammed river in the contiguous United States. Intimate portraits of locals in both booming cities and dusty, dwindling towns along the Yellowstone River, illustrate the history and controversies surrounding this enigmatic watershed leading to questions about its future. Connect with colorful characters, get lost in the hypnotic cast of a fly rod, and experience silhouetted moments of fireside stories on this heartfelt river adventure.

Report on Salmon and habitat education from Walter Thompson

The report below is from Walter Thompson, who does a remarkable job taking on the education portion of our mission, as well as being the Hatchery Manager. Thanks Walter for another successful year:
This year we had 11 classes come to the hatchery from 3 different elementary schools. That pencils out to about 275 students. We also out planted Coho fry with 2 other elementary classes to North Creek. Additionally, nine 7th grade science classes at Canyon Park Jr High planted our Coho into their small stream on school property that runs into North Creek. So if you add it all up, plus the kids that help us at John Solbergs place--a couple hundred--and the kids that came to the open house to fish for trout and feed the Coho and Tom Hall's Parks and Rec's Kids fishing Class, I think we did extremely well in the area of educating and introducing the younger generation to the Pacific Salmon and to their importance to our region as well as to our planet. Thanks to all of you who helped make this happen this year: the feeders, the helpers at the kids' classes, the crew that moves the fish, and everyone who shows up when I send out the help messages. I really appreciate the support. Thanks again. Walt Thompson

No General Meeting this month....July BBQ

The Board of Directors has decided to combine the June General Meeting with our planned August BBQ and Auction into a single event, The Edmonds Salmon Chapter Summer BBQ. This will take place on Wednesday night July 24th at 6:00 PM at the Hatchery. We will make hamburgers, chicken burgers and hot dogs and have salads and as a special treat some smoke salmon. There will not be a cost for members and would like to see as many of you come as possible. We will also have a small raffle and auction, one item being a brand new Scotty digital electric downrigger with 60" boom. We would like to have some indication of how many members are coming and ask that you contact Gary McConaghy by phone at 206-354-0877 or by email at: gmccona@gmail.com and let him know you will be coming and how many. Our next general meeting will be the 4th Wednesday in September.