Welcome to the Great Lakes Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers

Ninth Annual Fly Tying Expo

The Great Lakes Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers will host the 9th Annual Fly Tying Exposition at the Ingham County Fairgrounds in Mason, Michigan on Saturday, December 6, 2008. The expo will be open to the public from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Over 80 tiers will be on hand this year to demonstrate their fly tying skills. The Federation of Fly Fishers Buz Buszek Award is the Federation’s most prestigious fly tying award and we are pleased that Buszek Award recipients Jeff “Bear” Andrews and Chris Helm will be with us.. Returning talents also include Dennis Potter, Rusty Gates, Ray Schmidt, Dick Walle, Julie Nielsen, Chris Soule, Oscar Feliu and many others.

Fly tiers will be tying a vast selection of patterns including trout flies, bass bugs, saltwater flies, streamers, emergers, dries, wets, and others. Once again, tiers will have the opportunity to sell their flies and fly tying associated goods from their table. The area for vendors will be greatly expanded with vendors offering a wide variety of fly tying, fly fishing and related products.

A number of events will be featured throughout the day including door prizes, silent auctions, bucket raffle, and a live auction during the lunch hour. There will also be an instruction table for individuals to tie their first fly.

There is a modest admission fee for the event: $10.00 for adults, $5.00 for children 13-18; children 12 and under are free. Contact Karen Harrison to nominate a tier for the event at wwgcp@verizon.net.

A map to the site of the Expo can be found by clicking here.

Expo Vendor Sponsorships Welcome

Vendors are encouraged to join us in making the Expo another success. Further information and forms may be found by following these links. We shall see you there!

Vendor Invitation

Vendor Registration

Vendor Contract

More Clubs on the GLC's Roster

The Great Lakes Council is proud to announce that a new flyfishing club has been formed to serve the Washtenaw County area of Michigan. The Huron River Fly Fishing Club meets regularly for activities of interest to flyfishers. Further information is available through Derek LeRoy, who is listed as the Club's contact person on the Clubs page of this website. Congratulations to everyone who had a hand in forming this organization.

We're happy to have the Mackinaw Trail Flyfishers renew their membership in the GLC.

A new FFF charter club has been formed in the Valparaiso IN, area. We'd like to extend a heartfelt welcome to the Duneland Fly Fishers, and we look forward to seeing them represented at all our events. Contact information will be posted on our "Clubs" page as soon as we can.

Who Are We?

We are the voice of fly fishing in Michigan and Indiana.

The Federation of Fly Fishers (FFF) and its Councils are the only organized advocates for fly fishers on the national and regional level.

The FFF is an organization was founded in Eugene, Oregon in 1965. It was formed to give fly fishing a unified voice, to promote fly fishing as a method of angling and to protect and expand fly fishing opportunities.

The FFF is now international in scope with active memberships throught the world. The FFF has hundreds of member clubs and thousands of individual members.

GLC Shirts Now Available

Be sure to check out these comfortable and fast drying shirts with the GLC logo, in sizes up to 3X. Details are here...

Advertisements available for Friends of the GLC

The GLC’s Newsletter reaches nearly a thousand flyfishers, and accepts advertising aimed at this select group. Our advertisers also get a link to their businesses, showing them as Friends of the GLC.

For more information, download the Advertising pdf here.

Please help us protect the Endangered Species Act!

Help us stop this attack on the law that acts as a safety net for plants, fish and wildlife on the brink of extinction. Please contact your Senators and your Member of Congress today and ask them to do all they can to stop this proposal from being finalized.

For the past 35 years, one of the most important ways that federal government has protected endangered species has been to have scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service review the federal government's own actions—anything from logging a forest to building a highway to constructing a dam. Scientists would then provide guidance on how a project could be changed to protect species.

But, high-level Bush administration lawyers in the solicitor general's office have decided to strip this very basic protection for wildlife. Instead of having the experts make this decision, agencies such as the Department of Transportation would essentially get to decide for themselves whether their projects would harm a species.

Congress has a number of steps that they can take to stop these regulations from being finalized. It is urgent that they hear from concerned constituents immediately. The Bush administration has sneakily announced these proposed changes during the height of vacation season when many of us are traveling. So, we need your help more than ever in contacting Congress. Please contact Congress today to ask them to stop the Bush administration from weakening the Endangered Species Act.

For more information about these proposed rule changes, please see our website: http://www.stopextinction.org/ where you can find our press release, a link to the proposed regulations and other background about this change.

Your help is urgently needed and greatly appreciated!

Three Strikes Should Mean You're Out, Right?

Part of what was sent downstream

For the third time in recent memory, the dam at Song of the Morning Meditation Center, on the Pigeon River, has sent a disastrous discharge into the river, resulting in incredible damage to the fishery. Please contact the DNR about this ongoing threat to what is, or was, an amazing trout fishery. Further information may be found in the following documents.

Letter to the Editor

Catastrophe on the Pigeon

Sturgeon Valley Rd. Photo

Song of the Morning Impoundment Photo

Pigeon at Tubes Photo

Highlights of the GLC (Michigan and Indiana)

Education

Please refer to the club activities and announcements pages of this website for news of flyfishing and flytying courses.

The GLC has flyfishing rods, with reels and lines, that are available to member Clubs for teaching purposes. Further information is available from Kevin Lounds at Yoopnnancy@aol.com.

Conservation

The GLC participates in river restoration on many fronts including Friends of the Cedar River, Michigan Governor's Hunting and Fishing Roundtable, MDNR Pere Marquette Lamprey Electric Weir, Grayling Stormwater Foundation, Mad River Ohio, Michigan Hydro Relicensing Coalition, and more.

Please check back as this site is populated with more information, and in the meantime, you can contact the GLC through Terry Lyons, VP Conservation, telyons@usol.com.

FFF and GLC Scholarship Award

The Great Lakes Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers has established a one-thousand-dollar scholarship for a student who will be entering his or her second, or later, year of college and who is working toward a degree that is consistent with the purposes of FFF.

This year’s cutoff date has passed. Information about next year’s scholarship will be posted on this website as soon as it is available. This year’s winner will be announced soon, and named on this website. Kevin Lounds, VP Education for the GLC, is in charge of the awarding of this scholarship, and can be reached at Yoopnnancy@aol.com. An electronic version of next year’s application will be available. Watch this website for updates.