Tonasket Middle School Camp and Tying Class

       

    Yup! It’s that time of year again; the kids will be getting out of school soon moving on either the next grade or on to a new chapter in their lives.

Well hopefully a small seed was planted yesterday at the annual Tonasket Middle School end of year camp.

This makes for the fourth year that I have gone up to teach a FLY TYING CLASS with Gary. This was a small class this year, competing against archery and a hiking classes. Tough choices to make at that age. So we only had 6 signed up and one of them was sick and didn’t make it to camp at all.

So with 4 girls and 1 boy and the help of Gary and Ken Stone, we got the vices set up materials laid out and we began.

      Like always we start them out with a simple introduction of the materials and tools, then onto the Parts of the hook, eye, shank, bend, gap, and barb. Getting the hook into the vice, make it twang so it’s held tight. How to get the thread started, dressing the hook, and why, picking out the tail and doing the measuring to get the length right, loose wrap, loose wrap, tight wrap tail is on top of hook. Striping clean the end of the chenille, tying it in. Picking the hackle, measuring with the gap of the hook, shiny and dull sides, striping the stem, and tying it in. Wrapping the chenille behind the hackle and why, covering the shank and tying it off. Reverse wrapping the Hackle, tying it off and how to finish it off with a whip finish tool. Hence now you have a Woolley Bugger the fly that catches all fish.

      This took almost all of our hour, the kids did great as always. With lots of questions about other flies and how big of fish could they catch with what they tyed. I showed them some of my other flies. Like always they wanted to see me tye something different and how big of a fish can you catch with one of those little tiny flies.

    I had showed them one of the micro midges in size 20 that I use at Rocky Ford and showed them a picture with it in it’s mouth. Almost un-believable.

Before doing the tying class Gary and I arrived early as usual and got in some fishing of course, Well after fishing here for many times and only ever catching Brookies to my surprise my 4 weight Sage all of a sudden  bent hard down and with a mighty tug. This had to be one of the biggest Brookies of my life I thought. After I got the line back on the reel and the extra 20-30 feet of backing and 10 minutes later I got my first glance at this monster a big ass broad shouldered Bow comes out of the water doing the flip flop dance and splash and off for another short run. When I finally put the net under it what a beautiful Bow it was. Strong and Powerful.    

   Gary had caught up to me just as I was ready to releasing it.

 He had talked to a couple of guys i  a boat that told him that some triploids Bows had been planted in the last week or so, later in the day we heard that  heard that a bunch of brood stock Bows had been planted different stories.
   Ken Stone joined us on the water a couple of hours later.  He did a little strippin and trolling untill the wind picked up and then headed off to the north end by the swimming dock to do some Chromimid fishin with his 2 weight.  So who really know, just that it was fun. I caught my fair share of Brookies some small and a few larger ones, but I do have to say that first Bow made my day and later catching another one was the fishing topper.

The highlight of the day was the kids always a blast.

This was the second one the first was bigger.