October Newsletter
April Salmon River Seminar - Talked with Fran at the hatchery looks like 4/26 is the day we'll shoot for. I'll draw up the announcement and put it out on the web boards, and Mark...I'll send it to you first for the LOSA site. Fred has volunteered to cook the meals...Mark....you did a bang up job on getting donations..for a raffle will you volunteer to work on that again? Please bounce back Mark and let me know.
Finally we'll need volunteers. We will once again offer seminar class in Single and two handed fly fishing, Float fishing, and Spin fishing. So four major categories. I have some instructors in mind, but we always need more then just one instructor per class....so please anybody bounce back and volunteer to help out with the instruction, just let me know what technique you wish to teach. I will help teach Single hand fly fishing....but will need another instructor.
Tree Planting - We would love to mix in the tree planting of our 2000 willows with the seminar (hold the Seminar on Sat the 4/26...plant tress the next day, but in talking to DEC...the trees might not be here until the first or second week of May. We'll be holding a separate event most likely. So not having a solid date for the tree planting....I can't post it yet. We'll need some serious man and women power to plant 2000 trees The trees are to go into the upper fly zone to help secure the bank on the stream rehab that DEC completed last fall.
Need A Secretary - Folks, we are in desperate need of a secretary to help us keep our records straight. I just don't have the time...and I haven't done a very good job. Lindsay....has volunteered to be the LOSA secretary and keep the books, and the membership straight with the right e-mail addresses, and so on. I'd like to accept her offer unless somebody else would like to also hold this position, and if so we'd hold an "E-mail" election. So once again...i need to get feed back. If nobody bounces back to this email on this subject...I'll consider an "all in favor" vote of confidence and Lindsay's takes over. If I get feed back that somebody else wants the job, or is opposed to Linds taking this important job on...we'll discuss further.
Meetings - We stopped having meetings a year and a half ago...for one reason and one reason only. NOBODY attended..or very very few. I'd set up a meeting spot.....drag gear to it and then hardly anybody would attend. We used to have great meetings with guest speakers and food etc. I know many of you are from out of town...and couldn't attend regular meetings. So we are looking for some suggestions. Hold meetings monthly...and get feed back that folks here in NY would try and make a Sat. meeting...or host say four meeting a year ...where people could figure on being in NY state. I'd like to get back to a meeting schedule.....but we need participation.
Whose got idea's. ????????
Seminar's At Gander Mt. Bass Pro - Here in Rochester I've been approached by folks who want some more LOSA seminars at the Rochester gander store. I'll probably set one up for March. mark...you've done some things at the Bass Pro...and Bass Pro isn't far for me to travel to...so I'd be glad to run or help out on a Seminar at Bass pro....any time. And then there are other gander stores west and east of Rochester.....that we could approach. Is there any interest to do some 2 to 4 hour dog and pony shows at any of these other stores outside of the Rochester Gander?
Again looking for Feedback.
Woman's Fly Fishing Seminar - We'd like to continue this. Bett and Lindsay...I'd like to discuss.....with you gals...on what is a good time to try this again. We'll work out the details and get it locked into our schedule.
That's it for now....please get your membership dues in as quickly as possible.....and please get us some feed back on starting up monthly or quarterly meetings again. Chris...and Mark...maybe meetings could be done as live chat on the LOSA site....or something like that for folks who can't get into town. Looking for ideas to get everybody more access to each other and more active.
DECEMBER NEWSLETTER
2008 Membership Drive - THE DRIVE STARTS NOW. We need you folks to continue the momentum LOSA has in helping this fishery. Without the membership support in both Dues and rolling up our sleeves and pitching in...we just can't make this work. I think you'll be pretty impressed with all the things that LOSA has been involved with this past year, and our involvement in the LO trib fishery. Remember at the moment, we are the ONLY organization that supports the LO tribs exclusively. We hope you consider joining again, Please get to losafishing.com...and follow the sign-up instructions.
The SAD News First - As many of you know we lost one of the LOSA founders Toby Wood at a very young age to a rare form of cancer. Toby was our original web master, and founder of "losafishing.com" as well as worked in many capacities for the organization....seminars, stream cleanups etc. It's beyond comprehension to lose one so young who had energy to put time in giving back to this fishery. You never get over losing good people this soon. God Bless his family through this very difficult time.
Spring LOSA Salmon River Seminar - This has become an annual event, and last year despite high water, and less then desirable weather conditions we worked with close to 60 anglers from several states to continue our legacy in education of sound trout and salmon fishing techniques. LOSA covers all the ground around fly, spin and float fishing. We had very talented instructors this past year and the feed back from the student anglers backed up our belief we had provided the best instructors possible for the different technical classes. Add in the highly successful meal plans and raffle event to add additional funds to the LOSA org. this was a huge success and the inquiries are coming in about the 2008 event. We'll need to plan that soon. We had quite a bit of help this past year with t he scheduling and logistics of putting this event on...but we can always use more...so please consider that near the end of April we'll host this again, and set aside some time to join the team putting this on.
Woman's Fly Fishing Seminar: I have to say personally that for the past seven years I've been involved with LOSA....the Woman's Fly Fishing Seminar was the most rewarding event I've been lucky to help with so far. This far exceeded our expectations, and we owe a great deal of gratitude to two ladies who led this effort, Vicki Lane, and our own fishrgirl - Bett as our lead instructors. What a great day we had, and again the feed back from the lady anglers who participated was wonderful. We held this event in July, and we hope to do this again in 2008. Many ideas on how to tweak it for the benefit of the anglers who participate, and again, we'll be looking for your help to hold this event. While we had great young ladies join us, we had a couple gals who are part of the casting for recovery programs. Breast Cancer Survivors, and they overwhelmed us with their thrill to be on a river with a fly rod in their hands.
National Hunting & Fishing Day - LOSA set up a booth and spent the entire day, staying very busy working with visitors to the hatchery at Altmar to demonstrate fly fishing, spin fishing and float fishing techniques. We spoke and worked with 100's of folks and their families through out the day. The Friday night before the Sat. event, Fran Verdoliva and I did an in house seminar with Fred and Lindsay's help in the hatchery seminar room. It was a great group with good show and tell and discussion.
Welcome back To The Oak - Just a couple weeks ago some of us in the western part of the state gathered at Orleans Outdoors Fly Shop near the Oak Orchard Creek to celebrate the land leasing between a private owner and the County of Orleans that opened up access that had been closed for over 10 years. It was a wonderful event attended by a nice crowd, and we had a lot of fun. LOSA provided the home cooking offering a free lunch to the visitors. LOSA involvement in this situation included some statements in front of the Country Legislature last Jan, to support their efforts to work out a desired solution with the land owner and the county with the beneficiaries being the fishing public. This partnership so far has worked out in spades. I've personally spent time with the land owner discussing this solution to see if indeed he was happy with the results, and while he wished it didn't have to take as long as it did, nor get as emotional as it did, he was very happy that a partnership could be struck. He seems pleased to see the increase to the use of the Oak, and in fishing it a few times, I can say again personally it's been great to be able to traverse his property to fish water I haven't fished in a decade. In short it's been a fun place to fish this past fall.
DEC Donations - From LOSA
*We donated our 1 year old gas grill to the Hatchery crew for their continued use as well as organizations such as LOSA to use when holding an event on the grounds. (Net worth used $150 in excellent condition)
* We purchased a new Printer/Copier and gave it to the hatchery staff ($400) The DEC runs 250 to 500K printouts for the public and organizations that participate in events at the hatchery and for visitors to take with them. The replacement of old equipment wasn't in their budget, yet long over due.
* Flat Screen TV to be used with the underwater Video camera we donated two years ago, as well as to run hatchery educational video's. ($600) We gave the hatchery a new flat screen TV high resolution to be integrated with the underwater video camera. The hatchery crew is moving the camera through out the hatchery showing the different stages of growth from the egg stage to smolts in the facility and showing this event on the hatchery network system. This system is portable and can be moved to the outside pens and runways as well...for visitors to enjoy. Once again this year the hatchery placed the camera at the mouth of Beaver Dam Brook to the Salmon River to study the summer run Atlantic Salmon and Skamania steelhead.
Stakeholder Meeting With DEC December 18 Waterloo NY - LOSA has received an invite to the Lake Ontario Stakeholders meeting with DEC and other stakeholder organizations. They'll discuss among other things, the egg take shortage and how they handled trying to make up the short fall. I know there has been some emotions around this undertaking. I won't drag all that out here , instead we'll report on what transpires at the meeting. The other item on the Docket for this meeting is for membership stakeholder orgs to bring any regulation changes to light for actually the 2010 regs...meaning Oct 1 2010. We'll get a look at the recommended changes for 2008, (weight restrictions in the fly zones, no more chumming, only one quart of eggs per angler, and other regs lined up for the fall of 2008) We'll also have an opportunity to suggest reg changes for 2010. In 2002, as LOSA among other groups of both professional and recreational anglers worked towards a 1 steelhead reg for 2004 that got passed as you know...we also tried to include a 1 Brown Trout limit. DEC refused this request and asked us to come back at another time, as they felt adding BT to the list would hamper the Steelhead reg from getting passed and DEC felt the 1 steelhead limit was crucial.
We didn't get it added to the 2008 regs, so now it's time to try for 2010 if we as an organization will back such a regulation. Brown trout harvest has always been high for both consumption and anglers harvest brown trout for eggs. We've seen now several years of down turn of brown trout returns to the western LO tribs. While this year has been better then the past two or three, it's not nearly as good as the late 90's early 2000 years. Those of us who worked on the 2002 steelhead regs were working on a continued three fish limit for the tribs, but only 1 of your three fish could be a steelhead, 1 a Brown Trout, and the third a Salmon. Or you could harvest thre e salmon (Kings of Coho's) or a combination of two salmon but then only one trout either a Steelhead or Brown Trout. I'd like to propose we revisit this proposal, and allow us to ask DEC to consider this reg for 2010. There will be push back from both Trib and Lake angler groups. If we are inn favor of this, what we have in the background is the so far overwhelming success the 1 steelhead limit has provided for added opportunity to catch steelhead in all our LO tribs, as well as the Erie NYS tribs. Some of the side of such a regulation would say that all we do with a reg like this is keep more fish in t he system for the Lake anglers to harvest. That remains true, yet maybe the sense that the trib community is working hard at best management practices for a fishery that due to many problems with forage and or disease doesn't return the number s of adult fish it did 15 to 20 years ago...we might be rubbing off on them. Still not necessarily rubbing off on the Charter Fishing community, but that;'s a work in progress, and we'll continue to work with other angler groups to see if we can find middle ground in best fishery management practices.
So we need feed back - from this org. Are you for or against a proposal for 2010 to move brown trout creel limits to 1 fish per angler per day?
2008 Schedule of Events and News
* Gander Mountain Seminar - Looking to schedule this for Feb 2008 with the Rochester Store (Would love to do this at Bass Pro as well...Mark we should talk)
* Tree Planting Stream Rehab Event For the Salmon River - I've just received confirmation from DEC that they've ordered LOSA 2000 Willow tress for our org to plant along the Salmon River. Most of these will be used in the Upper Fly zone where DEC finished a rehab project this past fall, not now we need to plant a bunch of willows to shore up the shore line. The tress will be available near the end of April. We hope to combine our Spring Seminar with a Tree planting event. How great would it be to have our student anglers be able to give something back to the river and it's environment at the same time working with us on becoming better anglers. If this isn't logistically possible, we'll have to plan this as a separate event. We could involved local 4H and boy and girl scout troops, other environmental groups, as well as professional stakeholders like guides associations or businesses in the Salmon River area of Altmar and Pulaski who benefit from having improvements to the fishery ecosystem....(This is for further discussion and planning, and will require some meetings up at Altmar in the winter and spring) We'll announce those gatherings.
* Spring Salmon River Seminar - The public is looking for us to continue - Most likely late April 2008.
* Spring Clean Up on The Oak - This had been an annual event, we missed it last year, we need to make it happen for 2008, the Dam area of the Oak is a mess again)
* Woman Fly Fishing Seminar - We'd like to make this a yearly event, bigger and better
* National Hunting And Fishing Days Event - Altmar third Sat in Sept.
Donations - As a result of earning from membership dues, and hopefully raffle's from Seminars we'd be looking to push another $1000 or more back into the fishery. I would like to find some opportunities to donate gear to Region 8 and 9 of the DEC, since we've been generous to the Region 7 division.
Open Forum - We are looking for any and all suggestions of other events to get involved with..please bounce back to this email.
Thanks to Chris and Mark for migrating our LOSA web site to a new service provider. WE NEED CONTENT: We need pictures from members sent to Mark (mktrout@gmail.com0 We want to get our fly database setup, so we need fly recipes, and of course a picture of the finished critter. We ask for these things...over and over...and everybody seems shy to provide. So please send us stories, pictures of fishing trips, and fly info. We need to get this site "Happening"
This note is very long...sorry to keep you all busy for so long...but lots to look over. I'm excited for 2008...we all should be...we look forward to hearing from everybody...please join us again for 2008.
Fishing Notes - Linds and I got to Mexico for Bonefish Tarpon Permit, and we've had a fun filled fall on the NYS tribs....a couple pics...enjoy
