Pineywoods Fly Fishers

                Founded 1988

    Chapter of the Southern Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers

          Web Site http://home.sprynet.com/~waltermc

President: Jimmy Lee             Secretary/Treasurer: Ken Baker 

 SPORTSMAN EXPO AND EATS

Ken Baker 

Calvary Baptist Church in Lufkin is sponsoring a Sportsman's Expo on May 14, 2005 at the Family Life Center at Montrose and Kerr Street in Lufkin.  Several venders including Boat Dealers, Four wheeler Dealers, Tri-Lakes and possibly some others will be there.  Festivities will start at 1:00 PM and will end with a crawfish and fried catfish dinner.  Tickets for this event are $10.00. 

The PWFF have been invited to be a part of this event.  We will be giving Fly Casting demonstrations as well as allowing anyone who would like to try their hand at casting a flyrod to do so.  We will also set up a table to demonstrate fly tying.  I intend to set up an extra vise and allow anyone to tie their own fly.  This will be an opportunity for us to present fly fishing to sportsmen that may know very little about it. We will be able to present our sport to people who are already sportsmen, so we will already have our foot in the door. 

Walter and I have already decided to be a part of this and I would like to ask your help to also come that day and help us.  Royce Feaster and Jeff Southern as well as myself are members of this church and I would really like your help. I will be donating some flies for door prizes and you might be able to do the same. 

I really think this will be a day worth your time.  Please think about it, and let me know if you will help.  Thanks guys. 

Workshop

 Bruce Sublett teaching his flies              

Club members show their tying favorites during the morning. Hourly door prizes were awarded while tickets sales for raffle items progressed. Randy McBride fished the entire shoreline while Walter and Mitchell McLendon kayaked the nearest inlet for bluegill. After a fine lunch of burgers from Jay Renken’s grill, Bill Heugel taught some Spey casting techniques.

Don McMurry won the casting contest with 254 points, which meant that he casted over 60 feet in each category. Bill Heugel was a close second with 251. Jay Renken set up a slim casting course with orange cones set about 5 to 7 feet apart to indicate the boundry on each side of the casts. Royce Feaster provided the 20 mph winds to force casters to control their casts. Everyone did pretty well considering the constant changing in wind force and direction. I think it quit blowing when it was Bill’s turn. 

Walter and Mitchell were about an hour late from evening fishing so Jimmy Lee conducted the auction after supper. Mitchell caught a record number of fish for his first day fly fishing from his kayak.  

FROM THE SECRETARY/TREASURER

Ken Baker 

On Saturday, April 8, we had one of the best Workshops that we have had.  Unfortunately, many club members missed it.  We had 22 members and wives and a couple of grandchildren come.  We had fly tying demonstrations by some of our best club tyers, a fly tying contest, of course Jay Renken’s famous casting contest, which was won by Don McMurry, we gave away several nice door prizes, had some good items in a raffle, two fishing trips, an Arkansas trip was won by Jimmy Lee, the Louisiana trip by Don McMurry and 15 great items were bought by the attending club members in the annual auction, which consisted of fly selections and a beautiful framed picture. 

We also had as usual great food from the donuts for breakfast, hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch and the usual good covered dish supper to go with the brisket furnished by the club and prepared by Howard Hinton, who helped prepare for the workshop with Bill Heugel, James Vest, Jay Renken, Walter McLendon, Jimmy Lee and myself as I handled the checkbook.  I may have left out someone and if so I am sorry.  But many other club members did help out. Bruce Sublett tied and donated some great flies. I also remember Royce Feaster helped and since Gene Sullivan was there I know he helped, as he always does. I do know Don McMurry helped and brought some ice.  

This is the first time we have done it all ourselves without having a special guest and I for one, am very pleased. I know others may have reports on the workshop, so I will give some basics on the finances of it. We spent $464.34, which included rent, door prizes and food.  We sold $35.00 of excess food, (leftover hamburger meat and brisket) which left us with $429.34 in expenses.  We made $405.00 with the auction and $537.74 through the raffles and the two fishing trips, so we cleared $478.00, which was good I think. If you were not able to be there this year, you really missed a good time.  We always can count on Linda McLendon and Pam Lee and they were busy this year.   

I will leave other remarks to others, so as always "ABAD DAY FISHING BEATS A GOOD DAY WORKING “

Spring Rendezvous

By Walter McLendon

We had 38 people attend at Lake D’Arbonne State Park near Monroe, LA and as usual we had a great time. Ouachita River Fly Fishers sponsored the event by paying all the state park fees. The facility is relatively new and it was refreshing to use a new kitchen, dining hall and sleeping quarters. Louisiana really knows how to design group facilities, it was first class; I wish Texas could do the same. Tyers enthusiastically exchanged fly pattern designs and shared their latest tying secrets. As usual, there was too much food but we all struggled through that. Now we can’t wait until November and our next Rendezvous.

Wind, Wind, & More Wind

By Bill Heugel

Don McMurry and I went to Lake Fork for a few days fishing with Brian Gambill.  The day we left the rains and wind were working us over but we knew from the weather report that it would slow down the next day and stop raining.  Well only half of that came true.  We met Brian about 7 and departed from the dock about 7:30, the wind was blowing about 15 to 20 MPH.  Kind of stiff.  Brian did his best to find places for us to hide but it was tough fishing.  The morning proved to have only a small amount of action. 

During the afternoon we went to the south end of the lake and found some fish.   Don managed to catch a nice bass off of the beds.  We saw a large number of sizable fish but they would not eat.  Finally toward the evening the wind dropped and we were able to fish a big flat that was loaded with fish.  I had one large bass on for a brief moment. It looked really big to me.  I used the famous Heugel long line release and hung the fly in the weeds.  It was still fun.  At one point we each had a fish on, nothing really big but a fair amount of action. 

The next day the wind was down in the morning and we were sure we would catch loads of fish.  We headed back to the flat where we had seen all of the fish.  They were still there but not really jumping on our flies.  We did catch a few and Don had some more action with a few bed bass.  He was able to experience the need for truly accurate fly placement in order to interest those guys.  There were lots of fry running about and many of the fish were guarding the fry and not too interested in our offerings.  Of course during the day the wind came back and we played hide and seek.  By evening the wind dropped again but the fish didn’t act the same. 

We managed to catch about 10 fish each day to about 3 lbs.  After talking with some of the folks at the marina we were convinced we had a good day.  They only got 4 fish that day.  We usually got back about 8:30 each night and we were whipped. We learned much on the trip and in particular where we needed to make some improvements.  Another fun trip with Brian.   

FOREST AWARENESS WEEK

Ken Baker 

I know Walter will report on this event, but I wanted to make a few comments.  I am actually writing this with one day remaining at the event. We had several hundred intermediate school kids come through our station where we demonstrated fly tying and casting.  The station was manned by Jay Renken, Walter McLendon, Royce Feaster and Ken Baker.  We were well received by both the Host of the event TEXAS FOREST SERVICE and the school kids as well. It is a good event and we look forward to doing this each year, although it is a lot of work, especially this time of the week. The Forest Service does a good job and even provided us with lunch and cold drinks each day. 

I said we were well received by the kids and that is basically true, although several kids could care less.  They are there to get out of class for the day.  But a lot of them were interested in watching us tie flies and watching Walter and Jay demonstrate casting and letting several of them try casting, which brings up a point.  Several of us who work this event each year are interested in coming up with a program where we can get the names of kids who want to learn more that we can show them in the very short time we have here and invite them to a day where we can not only show them how to tie a fly but teach them to tie a fly, teach them to cast and have them fish that fly that day, at a location like Ellen Trout Zoo and Lake.  We need to work out the mechanics of such a program, but I know it could be done.  We might have ten kids or we might have a hundred. Let's work on it. 

We were able to fish in the forest service lake and caught several bass.  It was all in all a fun time.

An Addition by Walter

We manned our club station for all five days instead of the past three-day weeks we have done each year. Lufkin, Diboll, Central, Lufkin (again) and Hudson schools sent kids on their respective days. It was Diboll’s first time to come and we really enjoyed their good manners and attentiveness but Hudson was the best in my opinion on Friday. I really like talking to kids who pay attention and ask decent questions, they rebuild my respect for kids today. We had about 300 kids each of Lufkin’s two days, where two classes of about 50 total came to us every 30 minutes. We break the group in half and rotate them between tying and casting in 30 minutes. I have gotten to where I can talk about the history of fly fishing, ask questions about it, then explain the difference in lure fishing and casting the fly rod, how to fish the fly, set the hook, retrieve the fish, properly cast the rod and still manage to allow each kid a try at the rod.  

I read Bill’s article above on fishing Lake Fork and I can tell you that I think we did better on the small lake we fished right across from our station. The gate opened at 7am each morning so we could fish until the buses arrived at 9am and we did very well each morning. We had perfect weather except for wind. The sun dictated each afternoon except Friday when we had a solid overcast so we only fished that afternoon. We could not catch a sunfish all week and thought they had all been eaten until I snagged one Friday morning then I managed two more that afternoon. They all were platter sized, fat, stout and beautiful. Our bass ranged from one to two and a half pounds with most in the two-pound class and it did not take long between catches. We did not even try fishing the larger lake where in the past we have had our best fishing. If you members had come to help us, you would have the privilege of calling TFS to fish the lakes like we have, too bad. If you would like to try to correct that, you can tie some special nice flies and donate a fly box of these flies to the Texas Forestry Association for their annual October fund raiser. I will be collecting these from everyone who would like to contribute until I turn them in right before their event. They raise this money to conduct a statewide program where they teach Texas public school teachers about forestry. I can look up the program for any of you who are interested in reading about it. They told me that this year is the first year the Lufkin District will host the annual meeting and they hope to break a record for donating to the program. Please save a few flies each time you tie and give them to me whenever you like.    

Programs

June – Dave Hayward, Orvis Regional Manager, will speak. Dave is an old friend to our club but has not been with us in several years.

Monthly club meeting are held in the Lufkin Room, Lufkin Mall at 7 PM, the program for the first hour and then door prizes and fishing discussions until 9 PM.

Club Calendar

2005:

Mar 26      Tonkawa Springs Outing & Cookout

Apr 9        Workshop, Kurth Lake Staff House

Apr 15      Spring Rendezvous  Lake D’Arbonne State Park, LA

Apr 25-29 Forest Awareness Week behind Hudson ISD

May 6-7   Smallmouth Rendezvous  Tahlequah, OK

May 14    Sportsman’s Expo, Montrose @ Kerr in Lufkin

May 21    SOC President’s Meeting Mt. Home. AR

May 28    Heugel Haus Outing at Bill & Conni’s on Toledo Bend

Jun 2-5    Southeastern Conclave  Calloway Gardens, GA

Jun 10-12 Dallas FF outing to Purtis Creek State Park

Jul 15-17 Grand Isle Outing  LA

Aug 8-12 National Fly Fishing Week -  ??

Aug 8-13 FFF Conclave  Livingston, MT

Oct 6-8    Conclave  Mountain Home, AR

Oct 21-23 Oktober Fest in Fredericksburg 

Nov 4-6   Rendezvous  North Toledo Bend State Park, LA

Dec 3       PWFF Christmas Party