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From the President's Desk:
FUNDRAISING RAFFLE 2002:
A full SAGE Outfit worth $1580*!
Dear Friends of the Grand Members:
Generous donations of fundraising prizes from SAGE Fly Rods and Bob McKenzie Agencies in the past two years have allowed us to raise $6,000 for conservation activities on the Grand, and there have been two very happy winners of top-of-the-line SAGE rods in our membership.
Bob McKenzie Agencies represents the SAGE line of high-quality fly-fishing products in Ontario.
This year, in recognition of the great volunteer efforts by FOGR members in conservation activities, SAGE, Bob McKenzie Agencies and Ontario Sage dealers have been even more generous in their support!
The outstanding prize in this year's Conservation Fundraising Raffle is a complete SAGE outfit, ideal for fishing our Grand River or packing into your suitcase for flying to a dream fishing destination.
No security hassles with a rod that is less than two-feet in length.
Here's the prize package:
SAGE SLT 8' 9", 3-weight, 5-piece rod (389-5 SLT, value $885)
SAGE Large Arbor reel (Sage 3200, value $420)
SAGE Quiet Taper 3-weight floating fly line (WF3F, value $70)
(* suggested retail price, plus applicable taxes)
A maximum of 450 tickets will be sold, at $10 per ticket.
Renew your membership, or join FOGR, at the same time as purchasing your tickets and receive a $5 discount on a one-year membership in the Friends of the Grand River.
The draw will be held at FOGR's Grand Opportunities Fly Fishing Forum, Saturday, June 8, 2002. Click on the link for the brochure for Grand Opportunities
*****
The tailwater fishery plan is getting off the ground (below), and I'll represent Friends of the Grand. We hashed this around before and we know most of your ideas. But call or e-mail to pass on your thoughts.
Sincerely,
Larry R. McGratton
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| Grand Times
Vol. 7:1
Is a
publication of the Friends of the Grand River, an incorporated,
registered charitable organization dedicated to environmental efforts
in the Grand River watershed.
The views
expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect
the organization’s policies.
Your
editorial team:
- Larry McGratton
- John Dadds
- Ian Martin
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Reflections on a Dead Language
By Doug Moen
It's the middle of January and I'm sitting in the Harvest Room restaurant at the Inn on the Park hotel in Toronto. The house Lady Lynn and I left some 16-months ago is a five-minute walk away -- across the park, over the Don River (which looks remarkably fishy in its upper park reaches), up a leisurely hill and into the middle-class sanctity of North Leaside.
I am not here by choice; I'm directing a 5-hour video series and the Inn on the Park is the closest hotel to where I'm shooting. Neither am I at the Harvest Room by choice - with the wind chill it's minus 16 outside, and I'm not up to facing it to get to one of the many great eating places in Toronto.
This is not to say that there is anything wrong with the Harvest Room, it's just that anyone who has travelled a great deal knows that hotel restaurants are a fall-back, and the best food is to be found in smaller, more individual places that are not run by corporations but by chefs and glassy-eyed, food-loving entrepreneurs.
However, I must admit the seared tuna in a sesame crust and wasabi sauce does sound quite good.
All of this would be of no note whatsoever for a fly fisher had it not been for the party the maître d' seats at the table beside me. It consists of a middle-aged couple and an elderly lady whom I take to be the mother of one or the other.
These are not guests of the hotel seeking refuge from the bitter wind; these are people who have trekked through it to dine here. I know this because both ladies are wrapped in voluminous, luxurious and expensive furs.
I am somewhat taken aback by this. It has been years since I've seen ladies all dolled up in furs. Furs are out. Furs are passé. Furs are sacrilege. Wearing furs is the moral equivalent of bulldozing the rain forests using child labour.
I might have dwelled on this indefinitely had they not opened their mouths. They have decidedly British accents. Not the accents of Dundee, Dorset, Yorkshire or Clapham Junction. No, theirs is the finely tuned, rounded vowel sound that can best be described as upper BBC.
In other words, these three are the product of the exclusive English Public School System: Eton, Winchester, Roedean, Abingdon, Bedford, Highgate. Wherever.
They are here to wrap their stiff upper lips around some prime Canadian beef.
All of which is fine, except that I have a beef with the English Public School System. It is the English Public School System that educated many of the Old Blighters whom we now consider founding fathers of the modern art of fly-fishing.
These Old Blighters had no need of a practical education, being moneyed toffs and gentry, and instead of taking something really useful such as wood-working, motor mechanics or home economics, they took Latin.
To the best of my knowledge Latin is a dead language and has been for more than a thousand years. Imagine learning a language which no one has spoken in everyday conversation for over a thousand years!
Having no other use for their education and no need of gainful employment they all became amateur entomologists and began dishing out Latin names for the trout's favorite foods.
Thus the beautiful little mayfly with the slight olive cast became Baetis vernus. Its slightly larger brother Baetis rhodani. Its even smaller kin Baetis scambus. And its bluish step-sister Baetis niger. Go figure.
And how about this one: the minute little pale olive dun, which measures no more than 3 or 4 mm, got the handle Tricorythodes stygiatus. You would have to lay five or six of the little fellows end to end just to measure up to the size of their name.
I will be the first to admit that when I first started fly-fishing, I tried to get into the swing of it. I started reading books on hatches. I kept some lab vials and a flask of vodka handy so I could pickle them and identify them later by counting the segments on their hind tarsi. Or the sinuate veinlets in their wings.
There were even one or two mayflies I could actually identify by their Latin calling. The Ephem… Epherema … (Okay, maybe half of one.).
The vodka soon gave way to single malt scotch.
Try saying these out loud: Stenonema luteum…Ephemerella cornuta…Ephemera guttulata…Epeorus vitreus…Leptophlebia nebulosa.
Hey! When you do it fast these names really start to roll off the tongue.
Paraleptophlebia adoptiva…Hexagenia atrocaudata…Litobrancha recurvata.
I'm really getting in to this Latin thing!
Siphonurus alternatus…Ameletus sparatus…Isonychia sadleri.
Wow! This dead language is really coming alive for me!
Who knows, the next time you see me on the river I might be really easy to recognize - I could be wearing a Toga! •
Click here for a map to Wellington Home for the Aged
Belwood Reservoir Tailwater
Fishery Management Plan
For some years, we've been looking for a fishery management plan for the tailwater fishery. Could be it's getting a step closer.
A public meeting was held in December at the Grand River Conservation Authority office in Cambridge.
The meeting focused on ideas from the public on how the fishery should be managed.
If you want to have a say in how it will proceed, there will be other meetings to go to.
You may have been to the meeting we had a year or so ago. This latest one covered the same type of ground.
Our Board was well represented, but don't rely on them alone to pass on all of your ideas. It's important that as many people as possible take part in the process
Off the wall, mainstream, quirky, old-fashioned, new age -- the more ideas we have on the table, the better we can be assured that a solid, doable plan will be developed.
Remember, it's this plan that will give all of us direction on where we want this river to go, and how it's going to be done.
A steering committee meets February 13 to get the wheels on this process. President Larry McGratton will represent FOGR.
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