by Larry Quilling
October 31, 2003
We are completing our fall high school program at Fairview H.S. this week. The two week program was started with the help of Bill Leuchten and Jon Spiegel, from Front Range Anglers with casting instruction. Bill, Jon and Shawn Bratt provided the students with two days of lawn fishing in preparation for their weekend trip to the Poudre. Jon also took a day to present an equipment demonstration in the classroom. All of the students demonstrated basic casting proficiency after the two days of instruction. Please stop in at the Front Range Angler and thank Bill and Jon for their support. www.frontrangeanglers.com
Last week, the twenty-two Outdoor Ed. Students were led on a bike tour of South Boulder Creek. Like most western creeks, SBC suffers from lack of late fall and winter stream flows. I lead the group past numerous diversions and changes in habitat from Marshall to the East Boulder Recreation Center so they could appreciate the riparian habitat in their own backyard. Students were able to view numerous trout at two of the diversion areas and minnows further downstream near the Rec center.
On Saturday, twelve of the students participated in an overnight trip to the Cache de le Poudre River near Fort Collins, CO. All but two of the students were 1st time flycasters. One student was a conscientious objector to fishing and did not want to inflict pain upon his catch. We devised a simple solution, I broke off the end of his fly at the bend and he fished harder than many of his classmates. Only two of the students had waders, so I selected a section of the river where there were lots of opportunities for rock hopping to reach the fish. The results were spectacular! Nine of the twelve students landed fish and most of them had caught and released two or more. One young lady hooked two but was content with long distance releases. LDR’s count in my logbook!
Julia O'Day, from our BFC club was a tremendous help and inspiration to the young ladies on the trip. Although the morning fishing was pretty slow for her group, Julia did not give up and helped one of her students LDR a couple of fish before nightfall. Fishing that late in the afternoon this time of year showed a lot of commitment to the kids. Thanks Julia!
Later in the afternoon, we took the group to the Colorado Division of Wildlife hatchery near the top of the canyon. Wildlife Technician, Scott Horak provided the biggest thrill for many of the students by providing a 5 lb. bucket of feed to toss to the greenback cutthroats and hatchery brood fish. Mr. Horak also gave permission to the students to fish a pond on the property that sent four of the students scurrying back to the truck to retrieve their rods for twenty minutes of fishing before dark.
Unfortunately, I do not have many “action photos” of the students because I was too busy helping them land fish and did not have time to run back to the Suburban to retrieve my camera. Julia and I left about 7:00 pm Saturday evening but here is John’s report from Sunday morning:
After you left we had a great (cold) evening and the kids had a blast. The next morning we got out and caught a bunch more as it was very warm and I think the fish were active. We actually started fishing at about 9:30! Max came through as the ultimate predator, followed by Dustin and then me! I ended up with 6 and spent a bunch of time helping kids. I even had a catch on command, so I could teach Stephanie what to do after you catch a fish! I looked like a real pro. I'm fooling fish AND students!
Our fall program at Fairview H.S. ended with a fishing tactics and entomology presentation by Paul Prentiss and Bob Bush. Bob and Paul put in hours of prep work for their presentation and it was a huge success. John Schneider said:
"Boy, they had a great show! The kids were much more dialed in and the info was very relevant, not to mention the pictures. I think it is really on track and can't wait to have them back in the spring."
A copy of Paul and Bob’s MS Power-point presentation will be available in the future. You can also find lots of pictures from the fishing trip at the same web location. Thanks again to everyone who made our fall H.S. program such a success.
Next week, I meet with Scout Master of the Longs Peak Council for Boy Scouts of America and members of the City of Boulder Open Space Water Management department. We are meeting to discuss a joint program between the City and BSA to coordinate riparian restoration along Middle Boulder Creek. The project will be planned for sometime in late March or early April and I expect we will have 50 to 100 Scouts participating. The BFC will complement the restoration project with fly fishing instruction which will satisfy many of the students requirements for badge awards. This is a very exciting program for us. We struggle to get chapter participants in many of our projects and the BSA/Boulder partnership will provide unprecedented resources for Boulder creek restoration.
It’s been a busy and exciting time for BFC and our youth education program. There is nothing more rewarding than helping young adults understand the ecology of our cold-water fisheries and to help them land their 1st fish on a fly. Please contact Larry Quilling or Shawn Bratt to find out how you can share in the excitement in our future programs.