The Council has supported various nonprofits through the years with auctions during the Volunteers’ Dinner at the annual Fair. With the proposed change of venue for the fair, we will not hold a fair in 2020 and therefore no Volunteers Dinner. A core of people on the board immediately recognized that this would mean the Council would not be supporting the worthy non-profits we have supported in the past. So, Sam Matalone, Steve Jones and Carol Anderson took it upon themselves to find a way to help this year. The new Online Auction was born. The accompany-ing article will provide the specifics. Please do what you can do to support the auction and our non-profit benefactors. Great work, guys.  On another note, the wide variety of reasons people fly fish was recently brought home to me via social media. A newbie fly fisher posted on Facebook asking for [...]

 After very successful completion of our 1st On-line Auction were now are launching our 2nd On-Line Auction!!!!!   We have acquire a great donation from Rio Lines and Simon Gawesworth. [...]

It’s a rare opportunity when you get a chance to preserve fishing access on one of the West’s great steelhead rivers. Right now we’ve got that opportunity. The Wild Steelhead Coalition of Seattle in cooperation with The Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club in Spokane has struck a deal to acquire 8 acres on the bank of the Grande Ronde River in eastern Washington. The land, a great deal at $25,000, stretches along nearly 2,000 feet of riverbank along some of the best summer steelhead water in the state. The Wild Steelhead Coalition put up $2,000 in earnest money to secure the land. The Inland Empire club has pledged $2,000 to the purchase. The Washington State Council of Fly Fishers International has pledged $2,500 and an anonymous donor has pledged another $2,000. The goal is to raise an additional $16,500 this fall and close the deal before the end of the year, said Jim Athearn of the Inland Empire club.  “It’s my intention to talk to anybody and everybody in the FFI clubs in the state to make this happen,” said Athearn. “These 8 acres are never going to grow a cow or a bushel of wheat, this needs to remain [...]