The Northern California Fly Fishing Board

All,

I have agreed to be the Co-Chairman of the Northern California Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers Festival of Fly Fishing for 2008. It will be held October 10-12 at Hutchins Street Square in Lodi. We are in the process of getting the event organized and I thought I would take the time since we are still a little early to solicit feedback regarding what you would like to see at the Festival.

Your comments and suggestions are welcome. I will forward them to the committee members.

Thanks,

Dustin Rocksvold
President
Amador Flyfishers

I like to see events that are geared toward youth. Things that will spark their interest like Fly tying, Casting and Entomology. Hands on events. I have not attended many FFF events but will likely attend this one since its so close.

Jet

They had a lot of fly tying as well as a youth tying area in Redding, but it was not well attended by kids from what I recall. If your son is interested in tying for a couple of hours, I can forward his name, etc to the one of the fly tying committee co chairs for consideration. They had casting instruction all throughout the event in Redding. I am sure that they will do the same at the Lodi location. This event is not really well attended for some reason, but the tying alone is worth the price of admission. Some pretty good tiers like Harry Mason from this board is always at these events. The dinner on Saturday night and live auction is a lot of fun as well. The funds raised go to a good cause. Our club directly received grant moneys for our Trout in the Classroom through the Federation's educational arm to help establish additional aquariums and chillers with local elementary schools. We were a little surprised to find that through one classroom, we had over 450 students participating in the program- essentially the whole school was following the progress of the trout eggs. Right now we have 15 scouts going through the Flyfishing merit badge program. This is the second batch of scouts to participate mostly through word of mouth. These are outreach programs directed toward youth trying to garner interest in not only fishing but conservation as well. If the information is exposed to them, they soak up the information like a sponge. This goes a long way in developing the mind set for conservation way down the line in more ways than originally thought. Entomology is not a bad idea, I would like to see that as well

Dustin, thanks for stepping up to the plate and co chairing the event. Hopefully we can garner interest in helping you out as well

Jet & Gitt,

Thanks for the quick replies.

My first concern was getting younger people in the door. I think with the proximity to the urban population base there should be a better chance of people bringing their children to the event. Especially if we promote the heck out of the "Youth Fair" portion of it.

We may even be able to have a school field trip bring some students over on Friday for some instruction.

One of my ideas, still in the idea phase, was to incorporate the BSA FF Merit Badge into one of the "On the Water" events on Sunday. Do you have information regarding the time it takes to get the badge? Maybe we can get the scouts most of the way done on the badge and turn them loose to hit the water as a group at a later date, or arrange a follow up with the local clubs to finish it off the next weekend? Do you think that there would be interest from BSA? I know it would not hurt us to have them advertising the event as well. They do have a big network in Northern California.

Other ideas included seminars on the Mokelumne, Camanche, Calaveras, Stanislaus, etc...

My head has been swimming with ideas the last couple of days. I am haunted by ideas...

Anyone that would like to help out please let me know by email. drocksvold at amadorflyfishers dot org or dustin at rocksvold dot com.

Keep the suggestions coming,

Dustin

Promoting the merit badge program directly to the Boy Scouts is a tough nut. Our group went directly to the local Boy Scout executive offices, to Round Table meetings at the district level to offer the merit badge as well as a merit badge intense day given by our district. The fellow leading the program is a former scoutmaster and he was initially amazed at the lack of interest. On a high note, a boy's father showed up yesterday at the beginning of the program and wanted to participate without his son as skateboarding was the son's thing. He heard that there might be room for him to participate from a fellow scouter. One dad outside our district is a member of our club. His association with our club has enabled his troop to take advantage of our program and we were to the point of turning folks away when they finally jumped on the opportunity. It appears to have a snowball effect once they find out that the program exists in follow up programs. The merit badge program almost has to be promoted at the troop level over the district level. If you think that you would want something like this, now is not too early to start getting the word out. The merit badge program established by our club takes two days without the on the water requirements satisfied. An invite to Kistler Ranch would only satisfy half of the last requirement- catch, identify two different fish. Release one and prepare and cook the other. The Kistlers would not take kindly to the last part with their bass or sunfish. A follow up day with a local fly club might prove beneficial in order to satisfy the last requirement. I'll talk to our boy scout coordinator about getting in touch with you with his thoughts as well.

The youth fare might just be the way to go.

Hope this helps.

You want to get kids interested in fishing? Put a trout pond in like they do at the ISE. Catching fish is the way to get kids interested. No, it's not fly fishing, but at least it is a start...

Whatfly,

I had thought of that but in looking at the map of the facility I am not sure where we could fit that in...