As I write this message, I hear via the “grapevine” – convenient term for the Lodi area – several of you have been on fishing trips far and wide and even out of the country in Mexico. Our December “member’s night” should have some real good fishing exploits to present for the rest of us. Start planning ahead now for a little story about your trip this year to present to the club. There is no criterion of professionalism here since even passing around printed photos of a trip while describing it to the club works too. Of course slides or a Power Point presentation are accepted as well. Let’s have a little light-hearted fun for our December meeting. Remember too, our October meeting is pot luck night. Stay tuned for the ‘alphabet soup” choices for that dinner. Hey, how about bringing some unused or older fishing items to swap that night, rods, reels, line, flies, nets or whatever.

Now that I’ve set you up for my next topic, our August 13th meeting at Oak Grove Nature Center will have me as your speaker. Somewhere in the past, someone thought it would be a good idea if the president gave a talk on one of his, or her, trips or tips about fly fishing. I’m glad it’s in August where traditionally we don’t get a huge turnout. Now there’s a challenge. My topic will be fishing the Owyhee River in the southeast corner of Oregon in the Mountain Time Zone portion of our good old US of A. Steve & Nate Cooper planned a stop at the Owyhee River during the first week of June so Bill Laughlin, Marty Kjelson and myself decided to tag along. As you remember, Steve has given us a “class” on fishing the Owyhee before. It turned out the weather held pretty well for us with the wind staying away most of the time. The Owyhee holds some tremendous brown trout since the water coming out below the Owyhee Reservoir is pretty constant in the low 50’s. Come on out to the Nature Center to find out how our trip turned out.

In case you’ve been in the backyard barbecuing and haven’t heard, our club is the host club for NCCFFF’s Festival of Fly Fishing set in Lodi on the 10th and 11th of October. Your DFF volunteers of Dan McDaniel, Jerry Neuburger, Charlie Edwards, Steve Cooper, Dustin Rocksvold (president of the Amador Fly Fishers), Eric Sherar (of the Federation) and myself have been working diligently planning and preparing the event which is being held at the Hutchins Street Square. By

the end of August we should have a very good handle on how many more of you members will be needed to help us in the tasks necessary to make this a successful event. We won’t be able to get into HSS until 6:00 a.m. Friday morning to set up the pipe and drape system. This sets each of the 44 booths apart for the exhibitors to use for their merchandise display. We anticipate we’ll need all the help we can get during that time as the exhibitors will no doubt be arriving by 7:30 or before eager to set up and they’ll need to be directed on where to set up. We have two exhibit halls at HSS and a theater down the hall displaying the raffle, silent auction items, etc. Dan and Bruce are going to need help in that department. This is going to be a hectic time so we’re going to need as many of you able-bodied-wader-toting bodies we can get. Jerry will also need volunteers for his registration desk as folk’s stream in to either pick up their pre-registration packet or pay to play. Bill Laughlin and Jerry will be cooking chili, sausage, etc, on Tony Ott’s borrowed trailered barbecue for a Friday night’s chili and sausage feed. Saturday evening will be a catered table-clothed dinner with live and silent auction items emceed by Ben Byng of the Tracy club. Bob Souza already has some volunteers to run our booth advertising our club and its activities but he could use more. NCCFFF of course will have a booth, as well as the Tracy club and a few more.

Please keep some of these items in mind where you’d like to help so when we pass out a sign-up sheet in September we’ll know how many more fishers we’ll need from the other clubs. The newly formed Stanislaus fly club has also volunteered some help, and I’m sure once word gets out several members of other clubs in our area will join in. Let’s show the Federation we can put on a very successful event for them.

Herman