A mighty group of IEFFC warriors headed to the hatchery on September 27th and 28th to perform adipose fin-ectomies on thousands of tiny fish. This is one of our most difficult projects and the extreme weather didn’t make it any easier. The rain on Monday was an absolute downpour, but our members stayed the course and upwards of 50,000 little trout had their fins clipped.

For those of you not familiar with the process, it starts with the fish being anesthetized. While they are briefly immobile a group of amateur surgeons carefully take the fish in their hands and trim off the adipose fin with micro scissors. Speed is essential because the fish gain mobility quickly and a squirming two inch fish is likely to lose more than an adipose fin. It takes courage to perform this function knowing that their lives are literally in your hands.

The members volunteering were Jerry McBride, Skip Cavanaugh, Bill Papesh, Guy Gregory, Jim Athearn, Phil Beck, Floyd Holmes, and Mark Pinch.

Thank you all for your efforts.

   The final step in preserving the Ebsen Fishing Access on the Grand Ronde closed last week when WDFW took control of the property.

               Thanks to the hustle of the Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club of Spokane, an acquisition plan by Seattle’s Wild Steelhead Coalition and the generosity of fly fishers statewide, eight acres of prime river access are permanently in public hands. Credit also goes to landowners Lynn “Radar” Miller and his wife Kay. The couple has admired the rugged Grande Ronde for years and wanted future generations to enjoy it as well.

               Miller owns other property in the area and for years he has looked across those eight river-side acres “and it was always nice to see the river and not a bunch of buildings,” Miller said last year when the land transfer began. “I wanted it to stay that way.”

The area between the north bank of the Grand Ronde and Snake River Road has been public fishing access since the early 1980s when the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife acquired a recreation easement from Miller. It’s summer steelhead water about three miles up-stream from the confluence with the Snake River. The main feature of the property is a stony shoreline between two fishing spots known as the Turkey Run on the downstream end and the Shadow Hole on the upstream end of the property. There is a pull off onto the property and a pit toilet installed by WDFW. At its widest, there is only 250 feet between the river and the road.

Last year, Miller decided he needrd to sell the property and offered it to WDFW, but the agency didn’t have money for acquisitions. The agency turned to the Inland Empire Fly Fishers in Spokane for ideas and club member Jim Athearn thought there had to be a way to preserve the fishing access. After a few conversations, Athearn and Miller settled on a price of $25,000. The Wild Steelhead Coalition of Seattle agreed to act as the non-profit transfer agent so private donors could receive tax benefits for their gifts. Now that land is in the hands of WDFW for ongoing management.

The Inland Empire club put up $2,000 in earnest money to secure the land. The Wild Steelhead Coalition pledged another $2,000 to launch fundraising. More than a dozen clubs and individuals –most of them affiliated with the Washington Council of Fly Fishers International—donated $30,000 that covered the purchase price and legal fees surrounding the transfer to state control. Donors included the Spokane Fly Fishers, Evergreen Fly Fishing Club, Puget Sound Fly Fishers, Columbia Basin Fly Fishers, Northwest Fly Anglers, Clark-Skamania Flyfishers, Wenatchee Valley Fly Fishers, Dry Side Fly Fishing Club and the Kelly Creek Fly Casters of Lewison, Idaho. In addition, the Washington State Council of Fly Fishers International donated and two national organizations pitched in, the national board of Fly Fishers International and Back Country Hunters and Anglers.

“There was regional support for this,” said Jim Athearn who spearheaded the effort for Inland Empire. “Now it will be a regional asset forever.”

The recipient of the IEFFC Legacy Committee scholarship for 2020-2021 is Collin Hendricks.

Collin is 22 years old and currently a senior at Eastern Washington University and plans on continuing his education to get his masters in fisheries biology following graduation.

Collin is from the small town of Chelan, Washington where he grew up doing just about anything you could think of outdoors. For as long as he can remember his father would take the family camping, hunting, back-packing, and, Collin’s favorite, fishing. This is where he grew to love everything about the sport, as well as the animals that he was catching.

His interest and respect for fish started when he was young and being able to work with and help these animals has turned into a passion of his. He had the privilege of working as a research assistant in the EWU fisheries department this past summer and was able to help Craig Wells with his master’s thesis as they collected tissue samples from Westslope Cutthroat Trout in north Idaho. This was a great experience and really gave Collin insight into some of the awesome work he hopes to do in the coming years.

Collin wants to thank the Inland Empire Fly Fishing Club members and especially the Legacy Committee for helping him along in his endeavors and for awarding him with this scholarship!

He has been invited to a future meeting and we are hoping Covid-19 will allow us an opportunity to meet this fine young man.

Jon Bowne has done a tremendous job giving us access to our speakers. The first month of Zoom certainly had its problems, but we were able to enjoy a very well done program by one of our favorite speakers, Phil Rowley. We also obtained Phil’s permission to send the program out to the members who missed the telecast. If you missed that email with the program replay information let us
know and we can get you the youtube link.

Until Covid is under control and we again are able to meet, we will be looking at presenters who embrace the zoom concept. We will continue to ask permission to record the sessions and will put those presentations on youtube. We will not be putting them on the website as that is available to the general public, so we will continue to send out the url link to the membership.

It is great to see and talk with members during the half hour leading up to the zoom presentation.

Make yourself available for the broadcast and say hello to everyone as you log on and await the speaker. We miss you all and look forward to a time when we can meet again.

Our club has too long a history to let it fall by the wayside. We will continue to fish. We will continue to look for projects in which we can participate. We will find ways to communicate and stay in contact with our membership. We will survive.

As usual, planning and volunteering was in place and Jim Athearn had the Big Horn
Show program well under control. Unfortunately, the corona virus has caused a cancellation of the show.
We want to thank all those who signed up to tie and a special thanks to Jim for all the
work he put into the coordination of the IEFFC effort.
We are set for next year and fully expect a return of this great show.
Those signed up to tie flies included Jon Bowne, Lee Funkhouser, Jerry McBride,
Bruce Morgan, Dan Lobb, Bob Schmitt, Walt Balek, Stephen Aspinwall, Lowell
Tveit, Bill Papesh, Phil Beck, Bo Brand, Bryan Harman, Skip Cavanaugh, Jake
Nelson, David Lohman and Bob Burton. Included in our contribution to the show,
Leon Buckles was scheduled to do special presentations of “Fly Fishing 101 and Beyond” in daily seminars. Thanks to all of you and hoping you will move your commitment to the 2021 Big Horn Show.