DBM Horse Ranch - Life in the Oregon Territory: February 2023

This evening our regularly scheduled meetings was held at our new meeting location - Chiquillas Mexican House at 428 Ash St, Walla Walla, WA. Dave and Dale have established that we would like to have their meeting room / facilities the second Wednesday of each month September through May, not December.

Again this month we conducted our meeting without any club officers leading the evening, but ex-President Dave Stemmer did step-up as Master of Ceremony to conduct the “management” of the meeting and introduced our guest speaker Chris Peery.

Our members and guest begin filtering into the Chiquillas banquet room around 5:45, as chips and salsa was being served. It was 7:03 before the first meals began to come to the tables. We have since spoken to Chiquillas that we would like to have the dinners coming to the table much sooner, so that we can conduct our business meeting without a dinner presentation taking place at the same time. They agreed. As always, the Chiquillas’ meals were delicious.

This evening we had 21 members and guest in attendance.

We did pass out Door Prize Raffle tickets for a fly box, but due to the very late start with everything of the evening we did not get around to selling any Raffle Tickets for the other fly box we made up for the evening, so this will be an added feature to our March 8th meeting. We are going to have some lucky ~ happy fishers to start their 2023 fishing season with a nice assortment of flies. Again we ask that you consider bring TWO (2) flies to the meeting to donate to the fly boxes – club business funds.

As mentioned… the Walla² Fly Fishers are currently conducting business without a full staff of club officers. Will YOU consider stepping forward and accepting a position of club leadership? If so, please reply to our Email address...

Walla² Fly Fishers wallawalla.flyfishing@gmail.com

to place your name in nomination. Historically club officers has given us two (2) years of service. We are currently without a club President, Co-President / Vice President. Hanging on for the time being are the club’s Secretary and club’s Treasurer with pending resignation for the Treasurer. Our most current past officers have filled their office positions for 4-years due to the pandemic gap in the club’s non-activity. NOW is the time for some good club members to come to the aid of our club.

Treasurer Harold did report that the club currently has $1,195.79 in our checking account, with no activities taking place at this meeting.

After dinner this month we welcomed Chris Peery – Senior Fisheries Biologist with the Army Corp of Engineers – Walla Walla, to give us a presentation of the History and current wellbeing on the Pacific Northwest steelhead and salmon populations.

Chris mentioned that prior to the first salmon cannery going into operation on the Columbia River in 1866 there may have been salmon runs that one could have crossed the river on their backs. He mentioned that in 1938 the Bonneville Dam was constructed and that created an impediment to the salmon runs, and in 1962 the Ice Harbor dam was constructed on the Snake River, which also caused a loss of cold water habitat affecting the fish runs. Chris reported that of the most current years, it appears that global warming of the Pacific Ocean waters is having the greatest impact on the salmon and steelhead populations and their inland runs to ancient spawning waters. Chris also explained that these anadromous fish runs are cyclical, with good years and poor years of species return runs. Sad to say, Chris told us that in the past couple of years that the Alaska and British Columbia salmon runs (where dams do not impact) were very poor, and it is thought that this is due to warming ocean water conditions impacting the fish populations. It may be that due to constantly changing water environmental conditions, we may have seen the best of the good ole days of salmon and steelhead fishing in our local waters. Current projected returns for salmon this year is 8-16 million running the Columbia River, and 1-2 million continuing on up the Snake River. Thank you Chris for your report, presentation to the club this evening.

After Chris’ presentation this evening the meeting began to breakup without any further announcements or a fly box raffle or door prize giveaway taking place. These boxes will be a real prize at our March meeting.

It was announced that at our next meeting on March 8th

we will have Grant and Lottie Richie giving us an updated presentation of their operations of fishing guide services they conduct on the Grande Ronde, Minam, and Wallowa Rivers.