NORTH TOLEDO BEND

RENDEVOUS

November 3^rd through 5^th

Have you ever been?

The whole time or one day?

Fly Tying

Great Food

Fly Fishers From Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, And More

Learn, Share Ideas

Make New Friends

Visit With Old Friends

Sit Around And Stare At The Fire

Relax For A Weekend

DO YOU WHO HAVEN'T EVER BEEN WANT HELP IN FINDING OUT ABOUT WHAT TO BRING AND HOW TO GET THERE?

CONTACT WALTER MCLENDON

************************************

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

CHRISTMAS MEETING

December 2^nd

at the Chamber of Commerce

Building on the East Loop

Remember to bring your favorite

covered dish (with food in it).

After the time of eating and visiting,

the "White Elephant"

Gift giving, trading, taking, etc.

begins

It is even fun helping in the clean-up

afterwards.

LOOK FOR MORE DETAILS

IN THIS SPACE IN THE

NEXT NEWSLETTER

MARK YOUR CALENDER, NOW!

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

First of all I want to thank Ronny Julian for conducting the last meeting. Due to the fact that Walter McLendon and Royce Feaster and I were going to be absent because we were on the way to Mt. Home, Arkansas to attend the Conclave, I had asked Jay Renken to preside. At the last minute, Jay became ill and he got Ronny to fill in. Thanks Ronny.

We had a good trip although we didn't catch a lot of fish. In fact, I got skunked. Royce caught one fish the first day and five the last day; and Walter caught five the last day. I hung several but did not land any. I did lose my glasses in the White River, but the water was so clear I could see them on the bottom and I was able to pick them up; although I got very wet! We were prevented from fishing several times by high water due to generating. We started the week wading in blue jeans and ended up using neoprene waders.

PWFF was well represented at the conclave. Royce Feaster, Walter McLendon, Jay and Geraldine Renken, Ken Baker, Ross and Flora Wilhite all attended. Also Michael Verduin, Slim Mitchell, and John Scarbrough, all out-of-town members of PWFF, were present.

It was a very good conclave. We were able to attend several good clinics, watch a number of expert fly tiers, and visit with a lot of fly fishers. We bought several items in the daily raffle and silent auction (I got a pair of neoprene waders for $ 20), and we even managed to keep Jay from buying any high priced poppers in the big auction by hiding his black bidding hat. Royce bought several nice items in the silent auction and Walter took a lot of pictures that will appear in the Long Cast.

Royce, Walter and I stayed at Bull Shoals State Park in my Travel Trailer and Jay and Geraldine stayed at the Ramada Inn. Thanks to them, we were able to use their room as a temporary headquarters.

We took some slides to hopefully use in a club program soon. I will stop commenting on the conclave as I know Walter and Royce will have something to say about it.

I understand some new people were at the last meeting. I do not have their names, or whether they joined the PWFF, but I hope they will be back for the next meeting. If you know them or remember a name, contact them and invite them back.

The North Toledo Bend Rendevous will be the 3^rd through the 5^th ,the weekend prior to the next meeting. I know if you can attend the N. T. B. Rendevous, you will have a good time.

Be sure to begin to plan to attend the Christmas meeting at the Chamber of Commerce building on December 2^nd . Be sure to bring your favorite covered dish and your White Elephant gift. Wendy Douglas, you know what you are supposed to bring.

Be sure, if you haven't paid your club dues, you either bring them to the meeting or mail them to the club address.

We have been having a good time at the fly tying sessions. I missed the one October 12^th at Ronny's house. The next one will be October 26^th at Jay's house. If you can attend these sessions, you will enjoy not only the fly tying but also the comradery.

Personal Note: Jay gave me a trout he cut out of wood and painted. He also painted Pineywoods Fly Fishers Lufkin, Texas

on it. I hang it on the front of my travel trailer It really looks good and advertizes our club. We had people to see it and ask us about Lufkin. Thanks Jay.

Hopefully Royce and I will be able to meet with Outings Chairman, Jimmy Lee, soon and come up with a calender of outings and events to present to the members. We hope to have outings that each member will want to attend. We have a lot of fun at these events, and I know that you will enjoy them if you can attend.

Be sure and bring your favorite fly for our club meeting drawing, and I look forward to seeing you there. And remember:

"A Bad Day Fishing Is Better Than A Good Day Working!"

From all the responses that I received concerning the fact that I ran my column the same two months in a row, I still don't have any new ideas on how to involve more of our members in the "fishing trip" give always.

To give my recap of the Mt. Home trip, I will say that I enjoyed the meetings, and the fly tying, and the sessions, and the meeting & making of new friends. The fishing before and after the conclave was very enjoyable, even with my tendinitis in my casting arm. Because I refused to stop fly fishing, I have it worse than ever now. But I would still do it the same way! I caught one 11" rainbow the day before the conclave, and five up to 12" two days after the conclave ( our last day of fishing, naturally). I must get my arm well so I can go back.

Fly Rod Record For Texas Bass

from a story by Matt Williams

Outdoor Writer for the Lufkin Daily News

14.14 lb. Largemouth Bass... John Lindsey of Fredmont, Calif. was fly fishing Lake Meredith in the Texas panhandle. He said he felt the windy conditions would be good practice for his Alaskan fishing coming up soon. But the Texas wind was even too strong for that. So he decided to fish in the stilling basin below the dam where he knew the TPWD had stocked rainbow trout. As he approached the pool. He noticed a large bass cruising the shallow water, so he went back to his truck and added a 6 weight tippit to the end of the fly line. He was using a 10' Sage fly rod. After tying on a hand tied bass bug, he caught a couple of small bass. He cast cross wind into about 5' of water, and as his white bass bug danced along it disappeared in a sucking swirl. Lindsey, assuming it was a large bream, set the hook That's when his line went taunt, the 8 wt fly rod bent double, and the fly reel began to sing. The big fish peeled line at will and headed for deep water.

Realizing he had hooked something bigger than a sunfish, Lindsey took his time and played the fish for about 30 minutes before he could work it in close enough to get a good look at it. The first thing he saw was a gaping mouth big enough to swallow a regulation softball.

Realizing the bass was much too big for the trout net he had, he waded in and tried to net the bass anyway. Only the bass' head would fir in the small net. So, he grabbed the lower lip of the fish with both thumbs and tried to get it on to shore. Nothing doing. The fat fish jerked and Lindsey lost his grip. Luckily the small hook held and he landed the fish on the second attempt.

Once the fish was on shore, Lindsey wrapped the fish in a wet towel, carried it to his truck, and put it in a 5 gallon bucket partially filled with water. He then took the big bass to a nearby marina to have it weighed.

The California fly fisherman watched in amazement as the scales finally stopped on 14.14 pounds. State Game Warden Winston Bishop showed up and worked for several hours to revive the fish in an aerated minnow tank.

Miraculously, the whopper survived the whole ordeal and was eventually taken to the Texas Fresh Water Fisheries Center in Athens, Texas where she became the first official entry of the season for the state's ShareLunker program.

Additionally, the fish is a new state record largemouth bass record for the fly rod, a water body record for the Canadian River, and should be certified as a fly rod world record by the International Game Fish Association.

As of October 27, the TFFC hatchery officials said the big bass, which Lindsey affectionately named "Rosie", appeared to be in stable condition.

Foggy Thoughts

by R. Julian

Here is a little bit of info on the fly tying that's been going on. I will start putting something in each newsletter telling members

what we will be working on each month. In October we have been concentrating on dubbing. The first session was at Ronny's house with Jack Holder, Jared Satterwhite, Jay Renken and myself. We worked on applying dubbing to the thread and then to the hook, attempting to use less material in the presentation and building the body up slowly. We also showed how to do the dubbing loop and when and where to use it.

This next meeting(the 4^th Thursday of the month) at Jays house, we will tie the gold ribbed hair's ear, prince nymph, and maybe a couple more that use dubbing. Next month

(November) we will have the pleasure of having Walter McLendon show his expertise in applying wings of all kinds. The first session (2^nd Thursday) at my house, we will work on applying wings in several different ways and out of several different materials. The next meeting(4th Thursday) at Jay's house we will apply our techniques to tie several dry and wet flies.

Please come and show us all the way you do things. This is a sharing experience, not a teaching one. Maybe Jack will bring some more brownies that we can't all eat. I will have to eat them because they spoil in the freezer. Ha Ha

No News Is Good News

by W. McLendon

The Southeast Council has a new website: http://www.flyfishsec.com

I met and spent the day with nice, impressionable, fly fishing guide and president of Trout Unlimited Guadalupe Chapter in Austin, named Scott Graham. http://www.flyfishingtexas.com/scott.htm He is setting up an Airstream trailer in Port O'Conner so he can guide there without driving back and forth all the time. Take a look at his new Maverick HPX boat that only drafts 5 inches while poling.

Montgomery County Fly Rodders has a new web page: http://communities.msn.com/montgomerycountyflyrodders

Ken Plato is still kicking and fishing in Russia. They will be coming home sometime soon, but no word on where yet.

Rendezvous

by W. McLendon

For all you new members and older ones who have never attended our annual Rendezvous at North Toledo Bend State Park, please visit our new website http://freepages.travel.rootsweb.com/~wem1/index.html

This fun event will be held Friday, November 3rd starting at 3 PM through Sunday November 5th. You and your entire family are invited to spend the entire weekend or just a day if you can. The website explains everything pretty well but you can be assured to have a great weekend. We hope to see you there.

A New Angler Scoring System

by B. Heugel

This has been an interesting yet frustrating few weeks. The grass is matted on Toledo Bend and the deep areas next to the mats are loaded with fish. Most of them are in the 8 to 12 inch range. The fun part is that there are many approaches, tugs and splashes to my flies. The frustrating part is that there were so few hookups.

It was during one of these sessions that I began to think we may have the wrong approach on how we score our angling abilities. As catch and release fisherman, even if we get the fish to the boat we turn it loose. Fighting that fish to the boat and taking it out of the water to remove the hook, measuring it and weighing it all stress the fish and reduce its chances to survive. Since we really want the fish to survive, a release in the water should work fine. Why not begin to score our long, short, and medium line releases in some manner (I have lots these).

We might also place some value on those swirls and splashes made without a hookup (I have even more of these). However, while these stress the fish even less, the fish still have to expend energy without a reward.. This lead me to the final conclusion (I am sure it is also obvious to you) that the greatest accolades go to the fisherman who fishes all day and doesn't even raise a fish. This scoring system may make me one of the top fisherman in the state.

I might propose this for our next tag team event. Think about it!!!!

Jellyfish Threaten Fisheries

October 3,2000

Gulf spawning areas decimated, scientists say. Swarms of jellyfish consumed so many fish eggs and larvae in the Gulf of Mexico this summer that some scientists are talking about the potentially serious future threats to commercial and recreational fisheries in the northern Gulf.

The jellyfish, a native species and an invading one, appeared in prime spawning areas just as breeding season for many of the

Gulf's most important species kicked into high gear. According to the National Marine Fisheries Service, the number of jellyfish in the Gulf has been rising for at least 13 years.

Scientists say the jellyfish are exploiting three major human induced changes in the environment:

First: thousands of oil rigs and artificial reefs established to attract game fish have increased the breeding habitat for jellyfish, which need a hard surface for spawning;

8econd: nitrogen pollution from farm runoff and industrial sources feeds plankton blooms, providing extra food for jellyfish,

Third: commercial fishermen take great numbers of menhaden, a soft-finned, bonny fish that competes with jellyfish for the plankton.

Dr. Monty Graham, a researcher at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama, worries that with all these advantages jellyfish cannot help but multiply at an astonishing rate. Making matters much worse, he said, is the advent of Phyllorhiza punctata, or Australian spotted jellyfish. The giant species, previously unreported in the Gulf, is a 25-pound bruiser of a jellyfish native to the Pacific. Some time ago, the basketball sized jellyfish established themselves in the Caribbean. This summer, after apparently riding ocean currents north, they concentrated themselves in passes of barrier islands that separate the Mississippi Sound from the Gulf of Mexico.

The Australian jellyfish have mostly died off in Gulf, but fishery scientists worry that they may already have affected next year's fish populations. Scientists say the animals were spawning prodigiously, broadcasting millions of their own eggs as they ate the eggs and larvae of native, popular sport fish including redfish, speckled trout, white trout and Spanish mackerel, as well as commercially important species like crabs arid menhaden, spawning just outside the barrier islands. This year, their eggs and larvae have had to drift with currents through the jellyfish-choked passes to reach the estuaries that serve as nurseries for the baby fish.

"These things are incredibly efficient at turning the water over, cleaning it of everything in it" Graham said. 'We're finding them with 200 fish eggs in their guts."

The newcomers have a frighteningly effective feeding pattern that involved swimming to the surface, then diving to the bottom, scouring the water of virtually every living thing smaller than a BB pallet. After flowing through the jellyfish gauntlet scientists

said the water was almost devoid of other life.

"You really have two problems in terms of commercially important fish," said Harriet M. Perry, director of the fisheries section of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory in Mississippi. "First the jellies are ingesting the larvae and eggs of these commercially important species, and then the fish larvae must compete with these incredibly efficient jellies for the same food source.

Perry said she worried that the Phyllorhiza may become permanent residents. Graham said he feared that their offspring might appear in larger numbers next spring. He noted, though, that the newcomers represented a small threat compared with the monstrous herds of native moon jellyfish still swarming offshore below Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana in a huge swath roughly 100 miles long and 30 miles wide. It is these jellyfish that worry Dr. Joanne Lyczkowald-Shultz, a larval specialist with the National Marine Fisheries Service. Lyczkowald-Shultz said the long-term picture might be bleak if the jellyfish species continued to grow at their current space. "It could be totally devastating," she said.

Program for November Meeting

by L. McLendon

Since we had so few members attend last month, we decided to have Jack Holder return for the November meeting to do his International Game & Fish Association (IGFA) presentation. Jack is an IGFA member and will explain their rules for determining and establishing records for fish catches. Since the requirements are different than the TPW Angler Recognition Awards, you will want to be present to learn what to do when you have caught a possible world record fish. It should be informative and fun.

Conclave

by W. McLendon

Conclave 2000 was another great success. 721 people attended this year as opposed to about 550 in the past. The weather was perfect except for the chilly wind, which hampered some of the outdoor activities. The smell of saltwater was definitely in the air since well known featured fly fishermen like Chico Fernandez, Captain Chuck Scates and Cary Marcus gave programs on fishing saltwater. Even Arkansas' trout guru, Duane Hada, presented a Belize tarpon show.

Chico and Chuck filled your platter with several programs each. Among Chico's were Knot Tying, Casting, Fly Presentation and the Saturday evening program. Chuck did Fly Fishing the Texas Coast, Fly Tying and Fly Tying demonstrations. I had seen Chico before; he does excellent and interesting presentations. I had also seen a couple of Chuck's programs before but the ones he presented at Conclave were outstanding. Chuck is not as well know as Chico but is every bit as good. He should become our big name in Texas if he continues making the fly fishing shows and doing his programs. Anyone interested in learning about red drum fly fishing would have found each of his programs invaluable.

Warm water programs were well covered with Terry and Roxanne Wilson and our friend Tom Nixon. Trout fishing, of course is always important so Ed Engle, A. K. Best and Dave Whitlock, as well as, several other experts did their thing. It was impossible to see all of some 44 individual one-hour programs plus many other activities like the auctions and raffles, both Adult and Youth Casting Games, women's outreach and special fly tying demonstrations held throughout each day. There were 40 commercial booths this year and they still had room for more.

For the first time, Casting Coach and Tying Coach programs were held. I volunteered to be a tying coach on Saturday morning. This was designed to help experienced fly tyers with any problems they were having in their own methods and techniques. Unfortunately, the only place available for this was behind the registration booth where almost no one knew about. Next year, it will be moved out with the round table tyers. There were 70 tyers demonstrating their talents this year.

To wrap up the show, Ed Engle, A.K. Best, Chico Fernandez and Dave Whitlock joined everyone in a panel discussion, fielding all questions from the audience. I really enjoyed their frank answers and opinions. I asked, what was the worst thing happening in fly fishing today and each answered that today's new fly fisher is not willing to pay his dues, meaning they all want instant gratification. An example was given of a person buying a few thousand dollars in fishing gear and clothing and approaching Chico to be taught in an afternoon, how to cast and fish for permit or bonefish so he could enter an international fishing competition. Chico said it took him five years to learn how to catch a permit. A.K. said it took him eleven years of trial and errors to become a fly fisherman. The message was very clear, we all need to do our share of learning, practicing and even teaching to even really enjoy fly fishing.

This was an awful lot to see and do for only $15. I know the 9 hour drive plus a Friday of vacation is a serious barrier to attending but it is well worth it if you take advantage of as many programs as you can fit in. Our Fly Fish 2001 in Athens and the Shallow Water Expo in Houston are the only Texas events that even come close to Conclave in Mountain Home, Arkansas.

###################################

Remember!

Mark your calender for our club meetings, Every First Tuesday of each Month,

7:00 P M in the Lufkin Room in the Lufkin Mall.

###################################

Calender

Outings and Events

*********

November 3^th thru 5^th North Toledo Bend Rendevous, North Toledo Bend State Park

*********

November 7^th PWFF Meeting in the Lufkin Room in the Lufkin Mall. 7:00 PM sharp

*********

December 2^nd Christmas Meeting

*********

More Club Calendar to follow as dates confirmed

(Check your calender, There have been several dates that have been changed)

*************************

Outings: Jimmy Lee

Library: Jay Renken

Conservation: Gene Sullivan

Programs: Linda McLendon

Membership: Walter McLendon

Editor: Royce Feaster

************************

Art work used by permission of Dave and Emily Whitlock

WET A LINE.... SOON!