Dan Cone called the meeting to order at 6:00 pm at the New Braunfels Public Library.
Treasurer’s report = Brien John reported that the club was solvent.
Fly-Tying report = Gary Nyland reported that 12 attended the last class. The next class will be March 7 th at the West Side Community Center from 6 – 8. He is planning that we will be tying egg patterns. Gary will be sending out an email to the club with details.
Membership report = Pat McQuinn reported that the club roster now was up to 50. Of those 50 there are 45 active and 5 that are no longer active. The 5 inactive have let their FFI memberships expire some time ago and are no longer involved with the club.
Pat also reported that as a result of Troutfest we have 3 new members. We also recognized several guests that were attending the meeting.
Education = Chris Long was unable to attend the meeting. He did report that he is gathering the training materials that the club owns for future education classes.
Website = Ed Sweet was not able to attend the meeting. He did report that the club’s website currently has 2100 followers. Ed also reported that egg patterns and black wooly buggers were the best performers for the week.
Outings = Ron DeMeyer reported that the last outing was at Action Angler and we had 10 club members participating. Phil Lambrecht caught the most trout and the hamburgers at the Horseshoe Grill were great as always.
Ron reported there are no current outings planned on the Guadalupe. He did present a possible outing the Texas Council of FFI is having in Waco on April 20 th . Dan also shared that this FFI event will have many activities during the day including casting instructions, casting contests, raffle and food trucks. One of FFI’s primary goals is to bring members from different
local clubs together. The event is posted on their website www.tcffi.org.
Club Survey = Pat reported that there had not been any new submittals from the original 8received. The club agreed that the survey results will be presented and discussed during our March 27 th meeting.
Troutfest recap = Ron reported that Troutfest was a success even if we almost froze on Saturday. We had 87 visitors that signed our log requesting additional information about the club. Pat reported that of the 87 there were only 5 that the email addresses were not legible. 82 visitors were successfully contacted.
Ron reported that Bill Marshall, the President of GRTU, during the Sunday morning open GRTU meeting gave very nice words of appreciation for the work that the New Braunfels Fly Fishers do in support of GRTU and the fishery. Bill shared the club’s efforts supporting the Youth
Camp with the gift bags, the fish feeding program and our efforts in general. It was very nice to receive this recognition from the President of GRTU.
Ron reported that he had met a member of the Texas State Fly Fishers. This club is made up primarily of college ladies and she was discussing how the clubs could support each other.
Katie Heggie has volunteered to liaison with them to see how we can move forward.
Guest Speaker = Cody LaCroix presented fishing in Alaska on the Copper River. Cody guides for Copper River Lodge. Cody presented the great rainbow trout fishing along with the salmon, grayling, and other species in the Copper River. Along with catching beautiful rainbows you also get to experience “close up” brown bears feeding on the salmon. Fishing season is from June to September.
Fly Raffle = The fly raffle was a great success with many flies, books, and other items won.
Martin Stults as in past raffles, donated many of the items. The fly-tying classes had tied so many flies that Ron was able to put two flies in each cup. This was a nice surprise.
March’s club meeting = Wednesday March 27 th will be our next club meeting. The agenda will include discussion of the survey results and watching the film that Texas A&M Fly Fishers did on the Guadalupe River.