Monday, March 2, 2009

Richard Bangs, Rain and the Eng Theng

Random odds and ends and a report about the Fly Fishing Show in Pleasanton.
  • 2007 Mark Dubois Award Winner Richard Bangs will be giving a slide show about Morocco at Mountain Travel Sobek. They are good people.

  • At FOR World Headquarters (aka our Sacramento office) we are, in theory, 88% of normal for precipitation. Paso Robles is at 49% of normal, which isn’t good for drought, but might be good for fire scorched hillsides. It can be hard to make heads or tails of our water picture at the moment. It is easy to tell, however, that one year of decent rainfall that approaches normal, won’t get us out of the water fights we have ahead of us. As I write this from my Placerville home, it is raining on a 45% angle and the big pines are swaying like a tired angler after a few Steelhead Pale Ales.

  • I was at the Fly Fishing Show in Pleasanton over the weekend, manning the Friends of the River table. Some of our fellow river-savers were out there, Western Rivers Conservancy and Trout Unlimited were within casting range. It was good to spread the word about our work with the mad-for-fly-fishing masses. It was also good to hear how many folks had heard of Friends of the River or were getting our emails through their Fly Fishing Clubs. During the slow periods I got to work on filling my fly box. I tied about 2 dozen #16 bead head pheasant tails and twenty #14 Eng Thengs (a fly from my home water of the Upper Sacramento invented by Dunsmuir guide and all around good guy, Wayne Eng). Thanks to Big Bird for working the table with me on Saturday.

For a fly fisherman in California, this is a beloved sight... the Red Barn on the Fall River. Located to the East of Mt. Shasta, the Fall River is the largest upwelling of spring water in North America and happens to be one heck of a fishery.

Bjorn - FOR Development Director and fish nut.

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