Apr 07, 2012
from 08:30 AM to 03:30 PM
Where Resaca de las Palmas State Park, Omito, Texas
Contact Name Dr. Reynaldo Ramirez, Jr.
Contact Email reyram49@gmail.com
Contact Phone (956) 639-3426

This workshop includes the basic and intermediate fly fishing courses and is open to adults and children (ages 10 or above) interested in fly fishing. Basic elements of the course will include Fly Casting, Fly Tying, Ecology, Game Laws, Ethics, and Fly Fishing Tactics. Class is limited to 15 participants. Wear comfortable clothing for outdoor activities and bring a sack lunch for the one hour break between classes. There is no charge for the workshop; however there is a fee of $4.00 per person paid on arrival as part of the park entrance fee; pre-registration required. To register or for information contact Dr. Reynaldo Ramirez, Jr. at (956) 639-3426 or email at reyram49@gmail.com.

NOTE – If you’re down south, and interested at all in fly fishing, then you really need to know Dr. Ramirez. He’s one of those individuals who is happy to share the passion, and I still use his fly patterns to catch fish every time I go to salt.

ATHENS—Tie a fly. Cast a fly. Catch a fish.

That’s all there is to fly-fishing, and Fly Fish Texas is the place to learn it. The annual event takes place March 10 at the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center.

Show hours are 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. All Fly Fish Texas activities are free with regular paid admission to the center.

Fly Fish Texas emphasizes hands-on learning and immediate application of newly acquired skills. Visitors can collect aquatic insects from the center’s streams, tie a fly to imitate one of those insects under the supervision of a skilled tier, learn to cast it from a casting instructor certified by the Federation of Fly Fishers, then use it to catch a rainbow trout, catfish or sunfish from one of TFFC’s stocked ponds or streams.

Throughout the day, experienced fly-tiers will be demonstrating and teaching fly-tying in the Anglers Pavilion on a one-on-one basis. In addition, group instruction in beginning fly-tying will be offered in the Hart-Morris Conservation Center. Both are offered on a walk-up basis.

Beginning casting instruction will take place all day in the Conservation Center parking lot, again on a walk-up basis. Other, scheduled sessions will teach single-hand and Spey rod casting.

Vendors will be displaying and selling fly-fishing gear, and seminars will brief visitors on where and how to fly-fish in Texas fresh and salt waters for a variety of species. The program will include presentations on fly-fishing locations such as the Llano River, Lakes Fork and Lewisville, the Texas Hill Country and tailwaters below dams. A session will also be offered on fly-fishing New Mexico.

While most activities at Fly Fish Texas are offered on a walk-up basis, others are scheduled. For a complete schedule of activities and seminars plus a video of the event, visit http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/tffc and click on the Fly Fish Texas link.

Food service will be available onsite, or attendees may bring a picnic.

Several sessions will be aimed at youths or those working with youths. Keith Miller of Waco, who has been catching a fish a day since April 1, 2011, will speak on his quest and also fish with participants. Steve Hall of Austin will speak on the national fly-fishing in schools program. Brad Newman of the Federation of Student Anglers will share insights into how to set up a school-based fishing club.

Event sponsors include Sabine River Authority, Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites—Athens, Dallas Fly Fishers, Temple Fork Outfitters, Red Hat Rentals, Best Western Royal Mountain Inn—Athens, Friends of TFFC, Cripple Creek BBQ, Wulf Outdoor Sports, Cabela’s, First State Bank, Super 8—Athens and Orvis—Dallas.

Dallas Fly Fishers Basic Certification Classes

The Dallas Fly Fishers will teach morning and afternoon classes for beginning fly-fishers; pre-registration is required and is available by calling Craig Brooks at (903) 670-2222. These classes are the only ones for which pre-registration is required, since class size is limited. There is no fee for these classes.

Instruction will lead to basic fly-fisher certification and will focus on fly-tying, learning about fly-fishing equipment, performing the basic four-part cast, sampling aquatic insects to see what fish eat, discussing freshwater ecology, tying useful fishing knots and learning about safety and ethics issues associated with fly-fishing.

I just want to take a half minute to bring some new websites to reader’s attention.

After a horrible experience trying to purchase a Louisiana fishing license by smart phone on the way to the boat ramp, and giving up, I thought it would be helpful to create a well functioning site for anyone looking to buy a license for any state in the USA.

Buy A Fishing License is a new site created to make access to online purchase of licenses easy via smart phone, pda, or home computer.

The site, www.buyafishinglicense.com, is a portal to other state’s sites, drilled down to get someone looking to purchase a fishing license as close to where they need to go as is possible. In doing the work for this site, I found it amazing how often individual state’s sites change. It is apparent, in times of budget crunch, they figured out how to reduce employee hours by redirecting this kind of thing to online resources. Some of the sites are still pretty weak, and not geared toward maximizing ease of use. Security is something we all take into our own hands every time we head off to sites we consider “safe.” Make sure you know where you’re going – no matter what.

In an effort to increase world dominance of distributing fly fishing information, there’s also the relatively new www.oklahomaflyreport.com, and as you are well aware, www.texasflyreports.com is picking up a lot of steam.

Hardly a day goes by when I don’t discover some long existing site that does what some new site, perhaps including these sites, tries to do. It appears there are almost as many discussion boards as there are fly fishers discussing. A quick way to determine how prescient a discussion board may be is by checking when the most recent post was made. The vast majority of boards are, like blogs, abandoned. And that’s why I am busy establishing a new network of boards under the broad banner of “fly report” this year. It will be an extremely difficult market to crack, but new discussion boards that will enlighten anyone from anywhere – about the specific state they are in, or interested in fly fishing in – will be slowly creeping into existence throughout 2012.

TEXAS FLY CASTER

Texas Fly Caster is due for some heavy tinkering as well. It ain’t quite broke, but that’s the best time to fix it. You have probably noticed that some of the sidebar features are hobbling around a bit, an get moved around regularly just to keep them visible.

- The guides page will be downscaled from several guides to just one. The experiment in socialism is over.
- I am also looking to reskin the entire site with a new banner and new look. If you are an artist into the fly, I welcome your ideas, and can even budget in your art for the banner.
- I am finally deleting the “Discussion” page completely from the menu. Discussion is now at www.texasflyreports.com.

SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME AS ALWAYS

If you have seen other fly sites that you like the look of, feel free to suggest I take a look at them. This site has a lot of bells and whistles (for better or worse) that have made it the number one organic search site for fly fishing articles about Texas. There’s not really much we can change that would damage the rankings. Content is, as they say, content.