4CFF General Meeting - January 2014

This month’s general meeting of the 4th Corner Fly Fishers will be held at the Bellingham Golf and Country Club on January 22, 2015. The Wet Fly will begin at 6pm with dinner at 6:45. The program will begin at 7:30 and will be followed by the general membership meeting.

This month we will be kicking off 2015 by celebrating the many accomplishments and contributions of our members to our club and the broader community via our annual awards ceremony! Please make a point to attend to honor those who have gone above and beyond!

In addition to the awards ceremony, we will be taking advantage of the winter darkness to view a very important film. The movie is Wild Reverence: The Wild Steelhead’s Last Stand. This film was produced and directed by Shane Anderson, former pro skier and WA native. If this sounds a bit familiar, it is probably because this movie played for one night at the Pickford Theater in May of 2014. If you missed it then (as I did), then now is your chance. If you caught it at the Pickford, this is an opportunity to invite a friend and see it again. Here is a summary of the movie from Shane’s Kickstarter campaign in 2013:

Wild Reverence is a documentary film chronicling the plight of the iconic wild steelhead along the west coast of America. In Nov. of 2012 I made a pilgrimage back to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state to the rivers I once fished as a boy. This was a once in a lifetime fishing trip and I soon discovered wild steelhead and salmon were disappearing from the rivers and appearing as federally listed under the Endangered Species Act. How could the icons of the Northwest slip toward the abyss of extinction?

This discovery left me asking many questions so I decided to take off the rest of the year, cash out my life savings and embark on an adventure up and down the west coast to document and learn about the current plight of wild steelhead and why this fish is so revered.

We are constantly misinformed on information about the reality and the status of our fish until its too late. The effects of shifting baselines is more evident then ever. I wanted to find the truth, look at history and hard scientific fact as well as talk with people who have dedicated their lives to studying and advocating for wild steelhead and salmon.

My journey took me from Malibu, CA back north to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. I snorkeled some rivers and creeks and fished in others. Everywhere I traveled I met kindred spirits that the steelhead has influenced.

Hopefully through my journey you can see the scope of our rivers across the west coast, hear the stories and see with your own eyes where things are working, where they are broken, how WE can turn the decline around, fill our rivers back up with wild fish and save some of the magic for future generations. I hope to give the wild steelhead the spotlight it deserves and through "Wild Reverence" begin a movement to enact some real change before its too late.

Thanks for you support!!

Shane

Please RSVP for the membership meeting by Tuesday, January 20 by visiting http://4cff.eventbrite.com, by email at msr@deepsnow.com, or by phone at 360-319-1350. Be sure to indicate if you’ll be having dinner or just attending the meeting, and remember that a dinner reservation made is a binding commitment to pay. Also, a reminder that getting your RSVP in on time helps us provide an accurate count for the kitchen and we very much appreciate your help in placing your reservations on time.

Tight lines,

matt

Matt Roelofs

4CFF Internal VP and Program Chair