Casting and Fly Tying Fair coming up in April
Mark Your Calendars for April 27, 2025
Several clubs in the Washington Council are celebrating their 50th anniversaries. The Olympic Fly Fishers of Edmonds crossed the 50-year line in 2024. This year the Fidalgo Flyfishers of Anacortes and Clark-Skamania Flyfishers of Vancouver (my home club) are crossing the same threshold.
Congratulations to these clubs. I would like to extend the same praise to any of our clubs crossing the same milestone, but we don’t have a record of when clubs in the council were founded and by whom.
I would like your help to change that.
Our national organization was founded in Oregon in 1965. By the 1970s, early members of what was then the Federation of Fly Fishers (it was renamed Fly Fishers International in 2014) had fanned out across the country recruiting their friends and fishing groups to join the Federation.
Two prominent leaders in the Northwest were Errol Champion and Ed Foss. By the mid-1970s they were the president and secretary of the Northwest Council of FFF.
Danny Beatty, a long-time member of the Fidalgo Flyfishers in Anacortes, recalled that the two men traveled the Northwest recruiting clubs to join the national organization.
It was a big job, literally. The Northwest Council then included all of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and Alaska, Danny said. In the early 1980s, the Canadian province formed a separate council and in 1987 or 1988, Oregon became a separate council as well. The renamed Washington State Council is still made up of clubs in Washington and Alaska. There are 18 clubs in Washington and three in Alaska today.
Considering the fact that the Olympic, Fidalgo and Clark-Skamania clubs were all founded in the mid-1970s, it’s clear Errol Champion and Ed Foss were good evangelists for our organization. It’s hard to know how good. Through a mishap moving FFI’s national office all the records about clubs prior to 1980 were lost. It’s possible that a dozen or more Washington clubs were formed in the 70s, but we have no way of knowing.
That’s why I’m reaching out for your help. Several clubs have written descriptions and pictures of their founding. Please share those stories with me at president@wscffi.org. From those I will compile a timeline of when our Washington and Alaska clubs were established. I’ll then write a condensed history of how the council has grown and publish it in a coming newsletter.
Celebrating where we’ve been helps us look to the future with confidence. Every club has an interesting founding story and so does this council. I’m looking forward to what I’ll learn from all of you. Thanks for helping.