It has been a historically difficult time for our country and the rest of the world. The covid pandemic certainly has made our lives all the more challenging. I wish it were a bad dream that we could all wake up from to find that are lives are all back to normal. Sadly, it is not going away. Once a vaccine comes out, we will hopefully have a chance of returning to our regular lives. I hardly can wait for that day.
The leadership of SPFF has been busy with several issues this summer. One of our efforts has been on working on a totally brand-new redesigned web page. It is moremuser friendly and it has wonderful graphics. You will find it a pleasure to use. Shawn Davis and Ryan Stemkoski, the owners of Zipline Interactive, have been a true pleasure to work with on this project. Zipline has donated the webpage to the club all for theprice of taking Shawn and Ryan on couple on a couple fishing trips a year. I would highly recommend them and their company, if you need a webpage for your business or need to update your old webpage, call them. They both attended our fly-fishing school and they wanted to do something special for the club. The webpage we hope will go live in the next month. Once you see it you will be simply amazed what a fine job they have done on it. Wow is the word that came from our lips when we first saw it. I hope it will be yours too. The club’s leadership has been struggling with how to maintain our club’s life while dealing with the covid pandemic’s restrictions such as mandated meeting size restrictions. We all hoped that it would have run its course by now, and that we could have resumed normal club meetings and our outings. Sadly, this is not the case and we are having to adopt to the current reality of our lives. Our monthly club meetings for now will be web Zoom meetings where our speakers will be giving their programs over the web. We are so lucky to have board member Dave Marshall who is a professional audio-visual genius who will this project as successful as possible . We are hoping that this will be an acceptable replacement for our regular meetings. Until we can safely resume our normal meetings, we will use Zoom.
Spokane Fly Fishers LLC www.spokaneflyfishers.com September, 2020
For those who do not have internet access we will have a call-in phone number so you can at least listen to the meeting. I know this is far from ideal but for now it is the best we can do under these circumstances. Know that we are trying our best for our members. Al Odenthal has helped to line up our first speaker Mr. Leon Buckles. Thanks Al. I have heard that his talks are very entertaining as he has fished all over the world. He will share is fishing life and adventures with our club in his talk.
We are always grateful for all the contributions of their energy and time of our many club volunteers. Without their efforts this club of would not be the club it is now. Mary Kovatch, a distinguished club member, after many years wearing many hats for our club and contributing her time unselfishly, she has decided to stop teaching her beginning fly tying class. This Barbless issue contains a special article devoted to Mary and her long-term service to the SPFF club written by her friend Linda Howe. Thanks for all you have done for the club, Mary.
One of the most difficult parts of being the president of this club is to find people who are willing to fill the board positions and committee chairs for this club. Yet most members expect the club to keep functioning at the same level as it has for years without their help. Many members like Mary make substantial sacrifices of their time to the to the club. They strongly believe in supporting the mission of our club’s role in teaching our members about how to fly fish and tie flies, working on conservation projects, and to share with others the sport we love. Thanks, Mary, or setting such a high standard of volunteerism for our members to emulate. Can borrow a few of your cells so I can clone you?