Fly Fishing Insider Newsletter featuring Insider Newsletter, spey fishing, Marmot Dam counts, steelhead.

Our New Store is taking shape inside...we are working hard!
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Please stop and see our unique collection. 16.5 miles east of Sandy, next to Ace Hardware, across from Clackamas County Bank.

FREE !!! Winter Round Table
April 1, 2001, Sunday - 1 to 5 p.m. at The Fly Fishing Shop
Tying and fishing lake flies with Derek Fergus.
Derek is the factory representative for:
Powell, Waterworks, Doctor Slick just to name a few.
One summer he spent nearly every day for three months fly fishing Davis Lake.
If you like fishing lakes, bring your vise & materials and tie along.

RETURN OF THE SPEY
(Part-2 of a three part series. Click here for part one.)
by Mark Bachmann

Who first fished with a two-hand fly rod?
Why did they do so?
I prefer to think it is a sport born of love on a river bank...
so it should be...so it is a form of love...of rivers.

Angling is a game that can take on many forms. It can become a game of killing or a search for personal excellence within the angler. A game of traditional form is often judged most pure. Angling with a two handed fly rod is one of those nearly forgotten but purely traditional games; of gentry, even royalty.
No purer form of fly angling exists.

The origins of fly fishing are lost in the dust of several hundred generations of anglers....the inventors names are scattered by the winds. The first fly rod was probably a cane pole with a line tied to the end of it. The line was slightly shorter than the pole. The longer the pole the further one could cast.
Many poles required the use of both hands.
Two hand fly rods were at the birth of our sport.

No one knows who invented fly fishing. The oldest confirmed records are from very early bronze age China. Some Macedonian Greeks may have been fly fishing during the rein of Alexander the Great. It is likely that Celtic tribes fly fished before the Roman conquest of northern Europe. Whether fly fishing was transported across Eurasia along trade routes or evolved in different places independently is unknown.
In China fly fishing was regarded as a contemplative sport 4000 years ago.

One can only imagine how it was in those distant times:

It is the golden age of the great Shang Dynasty. There is peace in the Celestial Kingdom. Pu Ho and Laing have stolen away from the prying eyes of the village elders. Even though they have not yet officially come of age they are secretly in love. They can only be gone for short periods of time without being discovered. Through a life time of living in the same village they have established certain rendezvous....
secret places where they can meet and express their love to each other.

They pick their hiding places as children do; places that adults would forget. There is the cave in the lime stone cliff, the soft moss under the fallen tree....best loved is the island in the bamboo thicket which borders the river Dabie Shan.

Pu Ho often comes here alone and fishes for the golden carp which feed in the weedy shallow water between the bamboo trees.
Today the fishing was so good he ran out of bait.

Laing wears a garland of feathers in her hair. She embraces Pu Ho and kisses him on the lips. They make love in the warm sand. A feather falls from her hair and with the inspiration of after-glow Po Hu ties it to his hook with a strand of her shiny black hair.

And thus the game of fly fishing was born of innocence and love....
a prologue to the centuries that would follow.
To be continued...

*	FREE!!! Dec Hogan Spey Casting Clinic, April 7, afternoon Sponsored by: The Fly Fishing Shop & FlyLogic.
	This is: a 3 hour on the water exhibition that is guaranteed to give you a better understanding of 2-hand fly casting. YOU MUST SIGN UP TO ATTEND!!! Click here to sign up.

Try Dec's favorite summer steelhead rod FLO+1308/4, 13' #8 - 2-hand fly rod at no risk.
With the Trylogic		Program it is easy!
Just click the Buy Button to start the process for your 14 day trial.

FlyLogic DEC HOGAN SERIES
Model	Length	Line	Sections	Weight	Price	To Top
FLO+1308/4	13'	8	4	9 1/2	$620

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No Sales Tax FREE SHIPPING ON MOST ITEMS !!! Why leave your home to go shopping?

Just got the most recent Marmot Dam fish ladder counts from Bob Hooton at ODFW. The total count for wild winter steelhead passing over Marmot Dam for the period from 01/01/01 to 03/21/01 is 287 fish. For the same period last year the total was 200. That is a 69% increase over last year. No conclusions as to total run size can be determined with any accuracy. But, it might be fun to play with the evidence at hand. For the year 2000 the total count was 742 wild winter steelhead as of 07/31/00. If the early return head count can be used as an indicator for the total run size, the total run we might expect for the year 2001 would be 1,253 fish, or an increase of 511 fish. The water conditions are so much different this winter than last winter that no comparisons could be made for fish movement opportunities. 2000 was a high water year. 2001 has been a very low water year. If the numbers do work out then we have been very lucky.

Biological mathematics are always intriguing. Is nature quantifiable? If these 69% increases happened every generation into the future, then we would reach the "scientifically accepted" basin wild steelhead capacity of 4,500 fish somewhere around 2011; ten years from now. Is nature quantifiable? I hope so. I think I will still be fishing for steelhead 10 years from now. By my calculations we should have 6047 wild fish by 2113....well you gotta' admit that it's fun to think that the things you love can get even better. I think I will still be fly fishing for steelhead in 2013.
We may be fishing together.

Sandy River Fishery Information Bank
Daily Fishing Report Watershed Over-view Sandy River Book Biology Etc. Watershed Council Web Site To To