Meeting called to order at 3:10 P.M. Roll call was taken.
 

Others Attending:
 
 

Welcome to the meeting by President Camp. We have present two people from Arrowhead Fly Fishers. We are going to try to get through the agenda as fast as we can today. As ususal we will have the reports from the different officers and what they have been up to and what they want to be up to. We are going to go over some business on what the Federation has been up to lately and there has been much to do in the Federation lately. Dave Whitlock and a gentleman named Don Adams have some business to bring to us later this evening and I would like some time to just sit and talk roundtable on some issues that may give insight on how to improve our Council and membership and to just talk.

REPORTS

Secretary/Sr. Vice President

Acting officially the only thing Sec./VP Maler had was to present the minutes of the Board meeting in October. Motion made to accept the minutes. Bill Brant requested that the spelling of his name be corrected and that he did give a verbal report. Paul Sodamann requested that his club designation be changed from Flatland Fly Fishers to Flint Hills Fly Fishers. Correction noted. Motion to accept minutes made by Steve Jensen. Seconded by Hod McIntosh. With not other discussion, minutes approved.

Officially, Secretary Maler would like to hold comments until gab session.

Treasurers Report

To be held until Treasurer arrives.

Vice President Communications

This is sort of a summary of what I have been involved with since last meeting on October 4th. On October 14th a memo was sent to all Council clubs, officers, directors and Editor to share the following information: identification of the new officers in the Council, providing a complete list of Council personnel with home addresses, telephone numbers and e-mail addresses; announce the new position of Council Managing Director and identified Pat Smith as the person selected to hold this new office; announced the new positions of Parliamentarian and Archivist with Duane Kelly and Chet Smith respectively holding these offices. Also, on October 14th a memo was sent to all Council clubs, Council officers, Directors and Editor encouraging the clubs and individuals to submit their annual nominations (have one already) for the awards. The Federation Vice President, Richard Izmirian is working to put together a Federation Communication Committee made up of the Council Vice Presidents of Communications. Mr. Izmirian requested each of the Council VP’s of Communications to provide him and the other members of the Committee with a personal bio and describe how they handle their duties. Before responding I had received a number of e-mails from other Council VP’s of Communication and it was obvious many of the other Councils do not have any policies or procedures for their Council officers.

After discussing this situation with President Camp and with his approval, I prepared my response to Mr. Izmirian which included a copy of my suggested Policy and Procedure Guide for the VP of Communications as submitted to George Hobson in my November 14, 1997 correspondence.

My response to Mr. Izmirian also included several suggestions one of which was to have each VP of Communications share their Council newsletter or newspaper with all the members of this Committee. Incidently this report was mail to Mt. Izmirian because it had considerable number of pages of photo copied material. Mr. Izmirian asked that this report be shared with the other committee members and the report was photo copies and sent to the other committee members. I am sort of looking forward to working with that. I am going to be preparing a list of names of the Vice Presidents and I will ask John Stanford to include them on the mailing of the Long Casts and I will also be asking in my next e-mail session with them to identify their editor so that we can also add their editors to the mailing list so that we can share that information. It was just amazing - I got e-mails with a brief bio that telling how long they had been fly fishing and all that and then saying we are trying to have a Conclave - How do you have a Conclave? Who do you get - how do your do this - how do you raise money for your Council. I think we are so far down the road compared to the other Councils that it is just amazing and I really think that we should consider sharing the Policy & Procedures Manual with the other Councils at what ever it costs us to put it together and mail it out to them. I think this is one thing the Southern Council can do to assist the Federation and the Federation needs all the help it can get.

President Camp remarks that point is well taken and that this would be a reasonable time to talk about the Policy and Procedures Manual. For those who aren’t familiar with the situation last year when this thing was put together, and if you haven’t seen it, it is everything you every wanted to know about who does what in the Council, what they are supposed to do and by-laws, etc. The suggestion was made, voted on and approved to sell this to any of the other Councils for $1,500.00 because it is a valuable document. A tremendous amount of work went into this thing and one of the main points in charging for it was with, as I recall, if a consultant had put this together they would have charged many, many thousands of dollars.

Managing Direction Smith added at the meeting in October a committee was appointed to look into that. The committee consisted of Steve Jensen, Chet Smith, Michael Ames and Roger Maler to look into how we wanted to handle the possibility of selling or what to do with our manual.

Does the Committee have any suggestions. All four members of the committee agreed that they agreed with Hod that the manual should be sold at costs. The Policy and Procedures Manual should be used to help other Councils and not as a money-making venture. President Camp said the Federation is going through a lot of changes and a lot of turmoil within the organization, particularly some of the other Councils and something that could help bind the Councils back together would not be a bad thing particularly at this point in time.@ A motion was made by Hod McIntosh that we make our Policy and Procedures Manual available to all Councils of the Federation at an amount to be determined by the Managing Director with a limit of one per Council. The form of the manual (hard copy or disk) to be determined by the purchaser. Discussion ensued as to how to distribute the Policy and Procedures Manual. The decision was to distribute the manual to Councils with the Councils responsible for distribution to their clubs. Steve Jensen seconded the motion. Motion passed.

Post discussion - Hod McIntosh stated that we want to send the best product possible to the other Councils. He suggested that each officer carefully review his section of the Policy and Procedures Manual to be sure that it is as they see their position. It is also his suggestion that we make one modification. He doesn’t like the idea of having an appendix at the back. He wants to be able to go to Vice-President-Membership and find everything in that section. Please carefully review and make the necessary revisions and get to Pat as soon as possible. Duane Kelly suggested that a cover letter go with the Manual so that the buyer will know that a whole lot of work went into this product. He volunteered to write a cover letter. The proposed letter is to be sent to the M.D. as soon as possible to then be distributed to everyone via e-mail for input.

Assistant Vice-President Communications

Bill Brant got his FFF credit card. Several others then mentioned that they also had theirs.

He stated that he realized that not everyone is interested in computers so he did bring a couple of copies of the home page that are fairly complete. It just doesn’t have all of the Long Casts but it has everything else. So if someone who doesn’t have Internet they can see what’s there and if the have a computer but don’t have Internet access he had it on a disk so they could look at it. President Camp encouraged everyone to visit our web page. Bill is doing a great job with it and it is a very interesting page.

Asst. VP Brant continued that please understand that the home page belongs to the Southern Council and not Bill Brant so if anybody wants to add any content or if anyone has opinions on anything please let him know. Some of the things that are on the home page now are a lot of the standard documents such as Proxy form for the October meeting, the annual award criteria, the application for the Bill Lambing Memorial Scholarship. If you are writing articles for the Long Casts please feel free to mention that those things are available on our home page. The web address is http://www.sky.net/~flyfish/. VP McIntosh had recommended to Asst. VP Brant that we consider another server for our web page that would have more access capabilities so that it could be brought up at any time. He had experienced difficulty in getting on the web site and getting timed out in the evenings and getting booted out. MD Smith added that she goes every evening with no problem. VP McIntosh continued that adding another server may be something we want to consider down the pike. He stated he is absolutely amazed at the art work and the heading that Bill put together on the site. He thinks we have a cracker jack. It was sort of interesting in that some of the other Vice Presidents of Communications from the other Councils were working on their web sites. He was given their addresses and was unable to access those web pages.

President Camp asked when was the last time we had a write up in the Long Casts about the home page? Bill stated that he did one a few years ago. President Camp asked him to write an article about some of the things he just told us about what is on there. A lot of people will say great they’ve got a web page about fishing but they might not know there is back issues of Long Casts and forms and actual things they can download and use. Editor Fritz stated that the next issue will be the Winter Issue that will come out in March. The address for the web site will be put in the box on page 2.

President Camp received a letter from the Federation that said: for those of you not familiar with the new communication tool we are providing Fly Fishermen’s Virtual Fly Shop and lists the address (http://www.flyshop.com/). It has a conservation corner listing Federation, T.U., American Rivers, Nature Conservancy and Atlantic Salmon Federation and conservation efforts of each that the FFF can post with some editorial provided by fly fishermen conservation and education activities to this corner via Shirley Fulton. Asst. VP Brant was given the letter to look into. The site is allowing the Federation to post to the site to draw more people in. The web site is a commercial site and the feeling is that linking our web site to a commercial site is not what we are about.

While we are still on the net issue, VP McIntosh said that we have more offer to than the other Councils and he thinks that we are the first Council to do the current by-laws based on the Federation’s by-laws that were passed by the Federation in 1996. George Hobson and he put those together and he doesn’t think many of the Councils have done anything on that. They worked with Jim Schramm, the Great Lakes Council President and the Federation’s legal counsel, on putting them together. He had not mentioned this to the other Councils but since we have it on our web site he would draw their attention to this if they are working on their by-laws. The next step - what about putting out Policy and Procedures Manual on the web site. This was by the majority not thought to be a good idea due to the size and amount of material. The outcome of discussion was that the availability of the Policy and Procedures Manual could be mentioned on the site and who to contact if interested. VP Slane pointed out that if it was on the web-site we had no control over who accesses the document. VP McIntosh asked if there would be any objections to alerting the other Council of our By-laws. The answer was not at all. All officers and committee heads were told to feel free to talk with other Council particularly with your counterpart on that Council to see what they are doing. They may be doing something better than we are doing that we could learn from. They may be doing something that we can help them on. Communication among the Councils is one of the key things that the Federation is focusing on right now.

Bruce Fox said they are in the process of going over their by-laws and asked if there is anything in the SOC by-laws that they might want to include in their by-laws for their club. The suggestion from President Camp was that they read the by-laws and see if they would apply and feel free to pick and choose what would work for them. Also, Jim Schramm, legal counsel for the Federation, will review by-laws for clubs if they are sent to him. Send them to Mr. Schramm at National. VP McIntosh brought up that if you want to know more about the officers and the Councils e-mail Barbara Wuebber or Lauren Bagley at National.

VP Conservation

Report to be delayed until Treasurer Taylor arrives due to a project that is being planned on the North Fork of the White.

VP Development

VP Slane did not have a written report. He did tell MD Smith and everyone that his feelings were that we were to move the Conclave to the fairgrounds for the day activities and evening activities be left at the Ramada. He had instructed MD Smith to let the management at the fairgrounds know that we would be using their facilities. MD Smith said that had been done. Since Michael Verduin was not present he had nothing more to report on the Conclave.

President Camp said that the reason Mr. Verduin was not present was due to the poor health of his father.

VP Slane made a contact at Ranger Boats due to the winning of a bass boat raffled off the help the kids competing in the fly fishing tournament in Wales. He visited with a friend at Ranger and told him of the boat that Champion had donated and told the friend that he hoped that Ranger would do likewise to help us out. Due to the fact that Forrest Wood is an avid fly fisher, surely Ranger would help us out. Champion has designed that the funds from the boat go into the Educational fund and hopefully Ranger would do the same. VP Sale stated he would write a letter to Ranger regarding the donation of boat.

Questions arose regarding the location of the fairgrounds. They are located on Wade Street near the intersection of Hwy 201 South and Wade Street. Wade Street also runs off of Hwy 62 SW.

VP Slane also said Richard Turner is soliciting local vendors regarding donations for the Conclave.

VP Education

VP of Education Chuck Easterling submitted a written report. The report listed who has utilized the SOC’s equipment during the past year. Usage was basically from April through July with two utilizations subsequent to the Conclave. This usage is pretty well consistent with what has been done in the past. Availability of the equipment was advertised through letters to club presidents as well as in the Long Casts.

The Wayne E and Catherine Moore Youth Fund was utilized twice with a total expenditure of $337.47.

VP Easterling attached to his report copies of letters sent out advertising the scholarship and the Youth Fund. We only had three applicants for the scholarships this year and unfortunately this is running true to form. It is amazing that the first year we ever really pushed the scholarship we had something like 15 applicants and the very next year we had one. Frankly, looking back we have had quality applicants. We would rather have quality instead of quantity. We need to make sure that everyone knows about the scholarship.

He reported we now have two complete sets of rods and reels that can be utilized at the same time. There is also a very strong likelihood that we will get another set of vises. There are 15 of the old Sage rods and 17 of the new St. Croix rods plus one 10 wt that has no useful purpose. We have 21 new Martin reels.

VP Easterling said need to try to promote high school fishing clubs more. He did not know how we do that. He referenced Dave Adkins who was Educator of the Year in 1997. If you club is like others they go periodically and give lessons to high school and junior high kids, everyone feels kind of good and all walk away. The question is that really doesn’t seem to do a whole lot because you spend a day teaching a child to fly cast or tie flies and what’s that kid going to do. If he has an interest and he has no one I his family to turn, how is he going to pursue that. Dave Adkins did something that VP Easterling thought is pretty unique. He got in touch with various groups and made available through various donations to the school fly fishing club. The equipment is available to the students who are members of the club through their library. They check them out like they would a book. VP Easterling wrote an article about this for the Long Casts saying if you have any interest in doing something like this contact either him or Dave Adkins. Dave is a wealth of information. As so often happens, unless you have people in your club committed to the project it’s a pretty big undertaking.

VP Stanford said that along that same line they have utilized the equipment in they do a program with the local sheriff on “Hooked on Fishing, Not on Drugs” program. The sheriff contacts the “D.A.R.E.” and other programs and they put on a all day fly fishing program for the kids. One of the things that is required is they are accompanied all day by an adult, either a parent or guardian for the same reason. It doesn’t do any good to have the child come out and spend the day and go home and mom and dad ask what did you do - did you have fun - and that’s the end of that. Last year the Capital City Fly Fishers gave out six fly rod and reel sets. From that last year they had two new members for the club and the parents are attending the club meetings with the child. It has really worked out well. Some of the Moore Youth Funds were utilized for this.

VP McIntosh knows how hard it is to generate some interest in the scholarship as he always includes it in his letters also. He would ask that VP Easterling consider having an article in everyone of the issues of the Long Casts and possible to maybe do a retro on some of the past winners. Maybe this will encourage more applicants. Maybe constant mention would be a trigger.

Secretary Maler suggested because of the Mid-South Fly Fishers Wet Programs, VP Easterling might want to touch base with Judy Boston who is the conservation vice president and let her follow behind in their area with the high school fly fishing clubs where you now have a supreme interest. This might be a prime area for recruitment.

President Camp suggested to VP Easterling that he contact the club presidents and get educational success stories. There are a lot of clubs out there who would like to do something but don’t know where to start or what to do. With some ideas they can move forward. Whether it means writing letters or picking up the phone and calling if you don’t receive a response, contact each club if possible sometime over the next month or two to find out about educational activities and success stories. Then put that information in an article for the Long Casts saying here’s what is going on, here’s what we’ve done, look at all of these great kids we have had fun with. A highschool fishing club might be great but there might be something else a club could look at and say we could do this. Without the ideas and seeing them it’s difficult to know where to start. We need to be a dissemination point for this information.

This also needs to be done for Conservation.

VP Easterling suggested one of the things that we might do is order some of the pamplets from National and send each club 15 of those to each club with the suggestion that these might be of help to your club and the SOC is providing these for your use. The counter suggestion by President Camp was “what if we got one of each of the booklets and sent a complete to each club.” He directed VP Easterling to come up with a figure as to costs and put together a proposal. As soon as that is accomplished that info is to be passed on to MD Smith with the info to be passed on to everyone who has e-mail. This would give us a quorum. A vote will be held via e-mail as to whether or not we want to go head and order the packets for each club. If the majority vote is yes then MD Smith is directed to obtain the booklets and distribute them to the clubs.

The question was brought up as to whether or not to make it a yearly thing. The consensus was yes if so desired. The possibility that we might subsidize the clubs if they desire more copies.

Archivist Smith brought up that we have a number of books and pamphlets that were bought to sell at Conclaves - The Trout Series. He was wondering if some of the trout biologists might be interested in. He was directed to send them to John Stark if he is interested. We can then use them as a donation.

VP Membership

A written report was distributed. VP Membership John Stanford presented a few numbers from the FFF as of November 1, 1998. Total FFF membership is 10,150. As a total the clubs in the 13 councils have shown a growth. We have done exceptionally well. The SOC FFF membership is steady at 1,068. We added 149 members within the 12 months preceding November 1 which is 16% growth. We are currently the third largest Council with only Great Lakes and South East Councils ahead by a short margin. On the written report there is a comparison of our Council to the other Councils. Our database of FFF members and non-members is at 4,192. That is about 75% non-members. In response to a questions from VP McIntosh, VP Stanford said that he does not know how our numbers compare to other Councils as some of the other Councils to not keep track of their non-FFF members.

Annual Due Notices have been received from National and sent out to all of the clubs. We should hopefully be receiving those with a short period of time. We also ask for a list of officers and club members. The due date is February 1.

VP Stanford has begun the process of transferring all clerical functions to MD Smith. She will be maintaining the database, doing the mailing and she will provide monthly updated files to the VP Membership so he can begin to increase our membership and we are able to share the database to do that.

Currently Affiliated clubs must have 10% of their membership as current members of the Federation of Fly Fishers™. Charter clubs must have 100% of their membership as current members of the Federation of Fly Fishers™. Beginning January 1, 1999 all new clubs must be Charter Clubs. This ruling was passed at the National Board meeting in August in Idaho Falls. How well this will be received by the membership has not been decided.

Long Casts Editor

To quote from Editor Steve Fritz, “Now that we have MD Smith in her job, now that she’s got the scanner and we both get our OCR’s working, we can transfer things around without having to recapture keystrokes, life is good. Life is good because I have Hod here to help me, I’ve got Pat here to help me and all of you to help me to get whoever needs to get an article in in so we can go to press. Our third issue is at the printer now, it should arrive sometime this month. It will be our third twelve-page issue in a row instead of eight. I would like to ask that we have help from everybody in this room in trying to get more people to advertise because that is one of the things that will make it possible for us to remain at 12 pages - if that is what you want to do. I’ve got a few articles on my desk right now that I couldn’t put in the last newsletter. One of them I couldn’t put in the newsletter before that. There is so much news that needs to be in and everything got to fit that I haven’t been able to fit everything in. Help with advertising would be greatly appreciated. What needs to happen is the advertising needs to go to Pat first, then she will send the ad to me. If I need to re-do or set up the ad, I’ll do it. I keep a copy of what came to me so we are not going to get sued for doing anything wrong. I may manipulate it around to make it look better but I will not change the spelling in the ad. Also, we have picture capability. This time we will have a two page spread that is a montage of pictures. There are so many pictures there wasn’t room to identify them so they are in there as Conclave ‘98. They are good pictures. We need to thank Hod McIntosh and Bill Brant for the pictures. I encourage all of your to submit pictures of anything that is related to fly fishing. I need artwork also. I would like to have Bruce Cochran’s banner on a disk. One of the things that could be modernized is the banner artwork that we use. We can make it look better because Bill’s homepage looks better. If I can get that and make a change in the Long Casts banner - would that be okay?”

Consensus was Mr. Fritz is the editor and can set the newsletter up as he thinks best.

To continue quoting “the next deadline is January 15 for the March newsletter which is what we call our winter newsletter. The next deadline after that is April 15 for the July newsletter. I have a little problem with that. If you don’t send me copy by somewhere near that time, I vacation somewhere near that July date and I need to have the newsletter to press before I leave or I don’t have as good a time. That also is the Conclave edition. We moved it up as you all know because of that issue that was late several years ago. The deadline after that is July 15 for the newsletter that comes out in September just prior to the Conclave. You can work with me on those deadlines. If you call me and tell me you are sending me something, you’ve got to send it to me because I will be leaving a place for it. If it is something important I’ve got to know that you are going to send it. Then if I need to wait a while, that’s fine. The deadlines I have set up with the printer, Ed Reed in Arab, Alabama, wold follow these dates by two weeks. I need that time to work it into my schedule to get the newsletter out. Our newsletter takes about 76 hours to put together. What we’ve done to try to help the FFF membership, in response to a request from Tracie Maler, is have an application and article in each issue. So I go through the Internet and try to find something that Tom Jindra or someone else has written to use. End of Report. Is there anything else that I can do to improve?”

Consensus - no!

There will be a flytying article in upcoming issues done by Terry Tanner who is an excellent tyer and he will do artwork to go along with it.

President Camp requested that an article be in the next issue thanking Champion Boats. Something that we can send to them to let them know our appreciation.

International Report

Director Steve Jensen stated that he had nothing to report. He had not been in contact with National since the Meeting last August.

President Camp reported that Michael Verduin had been working diligently trying to arrange things for the upcoming conclave. He has Flip Pallot pretty well committed to coming. He is trying to get a cold water person as the second speaker. As you have heard we are going to the fair grounds. We went out and looked. There is a lot of space. It’s not carpeted, doesn’t haven’t nice textured ceilings like this but the space is just amazing. Michael is planning on having 80 fly tyers. There will be room for all 80 to be tying at once. There is going to be a lot of commercial exhibitors. We have never had space like this before. Larry Notley is going to be heading that up for the conclave and we need to be getting you in touch with Larry also so you can all three (Larry, Michael and Dennis Slane) be talking on commercial spaces, rates, etc. We could probably put 100 exhibitors in there if we want to. Ranger Boats and Champion Boats will have boats lined up outside. Hyde drift boats wants to come down and set up a display. When you look at the money - basically we have had 30 exhibitors at the Conclave in the past. That is as much as we can cram into the space. The space rental/donations have been $200. When we turn in 30 to 40 exhibitors we are throwing away that number times 200. That’s free money - that’s one of the reasons we have to move.

Roger Maler said “When our club comes to the Conclave we always have something to hawk or sell. We kinda saddle up against somebody because we don’t want to spring for the $200 for the booth. This might solve two problems in getting the clubs’ fly tyers involved in the Conclave - what about giving or renting one table to each club that wants one with a fly tyer and a hawk so each club, if they wanted a table on the floor.”

Dennis Slane was directed to talk with Michael regarding this. However, the problem is tables. There would be an opportunity for us to do this on a cost basis because we are going to have to rent tables and chairs which we have never had to do before.

President Camp: “One of the things Michael wants to do - he has been fly tying chairman several times and he understands the frustrations involved in getting fly tyers there in that it is not a problem getting tyers but in getting new tyers involved and having each club represented. Now that we hae all this room, he is wanting to do two things: Send an invitation to each club and ask them to pick and send a fly tyer. This will add about 40 tyers. He also wants to institute the “at-large” where he sends letters to regulars and he wants to start something that he has tentatively called “Legacy Fly Tyers”. This will be your Bill Munns, Royce Dams, Judy Lehmberg - people of that nature who have supported our Council and tyed for years and years and years and are truly a name in their own. Basically, say you have a seat from now on. Those tyers will have a seat for the rest of their life if they want one. Each year at the October business meeting take nominations from the floor for additions to the “Legacy Tyers” and the Board will vote on those at that time. The only problem is how do you pick the initial round of tyers without stepping on toes and getting someone upset. This will require some investigation and everyone should think on it.

Director Jensen suggested that “Legacy Tyers” include those who are Buszek award winners and Tyer of the Year awards.

To start out with it, will be left with the Conclave chair and committee to get it started.

The Archivist was instructed to get a list of past Tyers of the Year award winners including Buszek award winners.

It was suggested that an article be put in the Long Casts asking anyone who received any award in the past send a note to MD Smith.

Auction and Raffle chair for Conclave is Slim Mitchell.

Treasurer’s Report

Shawn Taylor submitted the Treasurer’s report as prepared by outgoing Treasurer Smith. The report shows that we have a couple of CD’s and General account with a total of $81, 460.00 in total assets. And under liabilities, these are all included in the checking out $18,935.79 which means we have a working capital of $62,524. The two CD’s are currently maturing in November of 1999 and currently they are 16 month CD’s at 6% interest.

On the second, third and fourth pages you will see a report sent to National which includes all of our expenditures including grants, etc that we are required to send to National for income tax purposes. The first page is set up primarily to help us prepare a budget. If any of you would like more exact accounting there is a spreadsheet available that will give more specific information.

Finally, on the last page you will notice there is a Conclave balance sheet. This is an overview of Conclave income and expenses. You will notice that the bottom line on net income was $32, 177.

If anyone has any questions, please ask. On the attendance fees, the increases really made a difference as pointed out by VP McIntosh.

Treasurer Taylor said he belong to a couple of professional organizations who stopped and wondered what was in it for the individual. He thought it might be good to have articles written for the Long Casts pointing out want is in it for the individual member. This goes hand in hand with the earlier idea of writing articles on success stories.

VP Slane: point of discussion - Steve and Harvey both did it when they were president, the people out there want to know how their money is being spent. The general audience of our people do not make that meeting on Sunday. Most of them have not got a clue how the money is being spent by the Council. The presidents that do show up from the various clubs - when they go back they have been inundated with so much information they can’t absorb it all. People need to know. If they don’t know they began to wonder and wonder leads to dissension.

President Camp would like reports from people going into the Long Casts. He wants a treasurer’s report in the Long Casts. We’ve got a lot of communication tools - we need to get the word out. The overall picture - “State of the Council” - will come in the President’s report. The individual officers should have reports in the newsletter. We need this to get the Council members more involved and motivated. Plus it gives accolades back to the individuals.

VP McIntosh pointed out that the pre-registration this year was 433 as opposed to 235 on site registrations. This is a tremendous amount and it was due to publishing the registration information in the July issue of the Long Casts.

Editor Fritz suggested that a letter of appreciation be sent to Ed Reed who published the Long Casts. He has done a tremendous job and is deserving of a letter of appreciation. President Camp said he would be happy to do so.

One other thing to think on from Treasurer Taylor. With the new requirement from the Federation of Fly Fishers™ that all new clubs be 100% FFF club members they don’t have to pay dues to National. Then we will lose our share of those dues. President Camp said that we will not lose due to this change. This was taken into consideration when the ruling was passed.

There was some discussion regarding ‘long term’ investment to give a higher yield. The outcome of the discussion was the recommendation that Treasurer Taylor put together a prospectus for us on what the options are and what the outcome might be. We are custodians of this money and we have an obligation to get the greatest yield from our funds that are not currently committed to projects or needed for on-going expenses.
Conservation

VP Conservation

VP of Conservation Paul Sodamann submitted a written report. He sent letters to each club asking for an e-mail contact and a list of projects to be presented to the Board. He only received one response from that mailing. He sent out letters to the Fisheries head in each state introducing himself and asking to be kept appraised of any needs. He received a response from the Oklahoma Fisheries Department seeking funding for a project.

The National VP of Conservation has established periodic meetings telephonically with all the Council VP’s of Conservation. A report on this is included.

VP Sodamann indicated he has been deluged with requests from various Stream Teams and WET programs seeking funding. This was discussed with the National group. He then sent letters to the clubs asking what they have done in the way of funding said groups in their area and what they are doing to help so that he could keep up with what is going on. He has had no response back.

Capps Creek - We voted on funding this project at the October Board meeting. National may donate money as well.

Lawsuit - Will be discussed later.

There was a request from Myron McKee on the North Fork River for assistance in a project to repair some damage done due to trees being taken out. The outcome of this after conferring with the Missouri Department of Conservation is it is best to just leave it alone at this point. The boulders are so large that it would be a major proposition to do anything. Nature hopefully will eventually take care of the situation. After considerable discussion, this project was tabled until some point in the future when we might want to again become involved.

There is a letter from Oklahoma which said they could use money for projects. After submittal of appropriate requests some funds were provided.

Arkansas Fish & Game also sent in a request.

There was a great deal of discussion as to the duties of the VP of Conservation. This brought up the details in the Policy and Procedures Manual. It was suggested that everyone read the manual thoroughly and provide MD Smith with any suggested changes.

Mr. Don Adams joins the meeting.

President Camp introduced Mr. Adams and turned to floor over to him to allow him to put his request before the Board now instead of waiting around until later in the evening.

Mr. Adams is a fly fishing guide on the White and Norfork Rivers. He asked who was from Arkansas and who had fished the White and Norfork Rivers. He says we’ve got a great fishery here and it needs some help. There are a couple of things going on that help and support of FFF on. Mr. Adams, Dave Whitlock and T.L. Lauerman of Wapsi and several others have begun to come together to put a little pressure on or lend some support to the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission to help implement some new regulations. Some are emergency and some are just new regulations that will help us all. We have struggled and failed in the past because we tried to tell them our values and morals and they don’t care. The outfitters in this area don’t care. We need to get the waste issue addressed. By doing this we should be able to get everyone on our side. The first item concerns the area below the dam on Bull Shoals. The Rainbows are not taken into consideration. They try to spawn in the area below the protected area and they need to be taken care of. He asked for a letter of support that there be an emergency closure of the shoal area starting at the downstream boundary of what is the catch and release area and extending down toward the dike of the state park which is approximately 150 yards. Another emergency closure is on down from the bottom of the park for catch and release only. It currently is c&r but does not include Rainbows. It should be amended to include Rainbows. The time period for these closures is from November 1 to January 31. By this time the majority of the Rainbow and Brown spawning is over.

The second item is the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission regulations for 1999 have not been completed and we have a chance to get some regulations changed. Items are law violations occurring on both rivers every day. It results in reduced number and reduced size of trout available to the public and negatively impacts local tourism and area businesses. Its are 1) poaching - existing laws are not being enforced; 2) guided shore lunches - killing more trout and dumping remainder and coming back in with full limits; 3) guided trips are being encouraged to take their six fish limit per person; 4) culling - fish caught with bait don’t last long; 5) chumming - particularly in C&R area which is illegal - San Juan (Sowbug) shuffle is a type of chumming that disrupts the habitat; and 6) Cow Shoals on the Little Red - should be put off limits during spawning. Those are the problems. The solutions are 1) petition Arkansas Game & Fish Commission to support the local game wardens to make arrests - strict enforcement of game and fish laws - a poacher is a thief; 2) outlaw serving trout at shore lunches; 3) lower the Rainbow trout limit from 6 to 3 to allow fish to grow; 4) lower the limit on cutthroat, brown and brook trout to one fish and raise the current 16" size limit to 20" - just like Missouri has done on Taneycomo; 5) outlaw chumming of any kind (including San Juan shuffle); 6) single barbless hook rule for all angles on the White and Norfork including bait angles to cut the mortality of released bait caught fish - ideally aritificials only; 7) outlaw live well son the rivers - make them clean them and put into ice chests; 8) make it illegal to posses uncleaned trout or have open bait containers in C&R areas - this will give the wardens something to enforce when poachers are caught; and finally 9) close Cow Shoals on the Little Red during the brown trout spawning time.

The SOC comes in with the campaign for the 2000 regs. They are targeting the wasted resource by the special interest group. We are no longer the special interest group. The fishermen who waste the resources are either through ignorance, apathy or greed. This limits the size and number of trout available to fishermen thus affecting the economy of the area. There has been some public opposition to the above suggestions and those who oppose them should be identified and published.

Mr. Adams would like to see a commitment from the members of the SOC-FFF hopefully National to write letters to the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission initially with a follow-up letter to let the G&F know how we feel. The Trophy Pin idea according the Mr. Adams is a big smoke screen.

President Camp directed Mr. Adams to get his proposal put together and get it to MD Smith who would them get it to the Board members for their action.

Considerable discussion ensued on the above items presented by Mr. Adams. VP Slane asked Mr. Adams if he was a member of the FFF and he said no. His reasoning for not joining was very original; however, he did immediately fill out an application and turn it in.

President's Report

President Camp stated he would not present a formal ‘President’s Report’ because we had been hitting on the topics as we go along through the evening. On agenda - the item ‘Jindra on FFF’ - what this is about is our president has been out an e-mail to all the officers in the Federation (executive committee) asking what is the Federation - what are we and what are we for. There is a great perception and a lot of discussion even fighting, arguing amongst the different Councils, the council presidents, within the executive ruling board on basically what we are and what we are supposed to be doing. Right now National is struggling for an identify. They are trying to find something they can hang their hat saying this what we do, this is where we are going and this is how it is going to happen. Quote from Tom Jindra to everyone: “he said I had hopped to spend time with all in New Orleans..... we were unable to make that meeting happen but still want to have the conversations so lets try via e-mail so he sent this to almost three quarters of a page people. In short I want to explore our identity, our mission and programs; who are we as an organization; what are our goals; what should we be doing; or as we, as has been said, a bunch of guys who just go fishing. I believe we are much more than guys who just fish and I’ll certainly inject my own opinions as we proceed but my opinions are not the ones that matter. What counts is that we find a group prospective. That is the bottom line in this. Meanwhile you might observe that these questions are old and have been dealt with by past boards and I would have to say that is true but I have seen too many instances where the Directors and even Council presidents wondering what purpose is served by the FFF. So yes the questions may be old but that’s no guarantee that we know the answers. We need an opportunity to discover ourselves. Let me specify that I am asking both the officers and the Board to participate on equal footing...” He goes on talking about loyalty not coming into it. He wants objective opinions. “Finally, each Council president is responsible for keeping his corresponding directors informed and we will ultimately compile a document for distribution. But we already have a rather large group so those outside the executive board and managing director will not be invited to participate.”

First question: Who are we as the Federation of Fly Fishers™? In Tom’s opinion, he says there are three answers. The first answer is the preamble of our bylaws. (We, in conclave assembled, out of a firm and abiding conviction that fly fishing as a way of angling gives to its followers the finest form of outdoor recreation and natural understanding, do hereby join in common effort in order to maintain and further fly fishing as a sport, and, through it, to promote and conserve angling resources, inspire its angling literature, advance its fellowship and broaden the understanding of all anglers in the spirit of true sport.) I happen to think that is what we are all about. It was written by people much wiser than I many, many years ago - the Lee Wulffs and others who first put all of this together.

Tom’s second question. What purpose do we the Federation of Fly Fishers™ serve? He says you might think such a question has a simple answer but it does not. The FFF is an incredibly diverse group with a surprising variety of constituencies and that means we serve many purposes. Some of us are interested in tying flies; some are more concerned with casting, etc. Surely there is some common thread that binds us together as an organization and one that we can all agree on. Something more than simply say we fish with flies. That something, in Tom’s opinion, is conservation. And it is essential that we never lose sight of that fact or if we begin to place other motives above conservation we risk losing the very sport that we seek to promote. Simply put, overlooking conservation leaves our fisheries at risk. Without our fisheries all angling sports become little more than a memory. ... Some would say we have enough conservation organizations, the FFF should be something different. He agrees there are many others with conservation missions but rejects the premises that there are never enough. If anything we need many more and as far as offering something different, that is precisely different, that is why we need FFF to speak out on behalf of conservation because as fly fishers we bring to the table a unique perspective based on a long tradition.

One of the things the FFF is trying to do is there is a move within the Federation to reorganize the Councils up to the point of doing away with Councils or doing away with National. They are wanting opinions.

Parliamentarian Kelley pointed out that we should not be discouraged about the present status of the FFF. Anytime you get people really talking, you should be able to find a common thread. If they stick to it they should come out stronger.

MD Smith: “Tom Jindra is a lame-duck president. What’s going to happen when he is gone? Do they have anything, any type of plans.”

President Camp: He hopes to get this thing going in the right direction so when someone else steps in they basically have a mission and a goal that is a consensus among all the Councils.

Arkansas Law Suit

It is pretty much a done deal that the Federation of Fly Fishers™ is going to be involved in a law suit against the Environmental Protection Agency here in Arkansas very soon. We were approached by the Sierra Club in November and asked if we would join forces with them in suing the State of Arkansas and the USEPA for not enacting what is known as the TDML program in Arkansas. The program, Total Daily Maximum Load, is part of the Clean Water Act that says you can put so many pounds of whatever into a stream a day in the form of total suspended solids. The TDML has not been put enacted in Arkansas even though it should have been put into effect in 1994. Because of the gravel mining, the Sierra Club feels that the best way is to attack this program and get rid of the gravel miners by suing the USEPA. It has been proven to be a very effective way to get action. It has been used in approximately 40 other states. They are not asking us to physically jump in. They are asking for our money. This is National, not the Council. They are asking for between $500 and $1,000 per year to basically help defray their legal expenses. The legal expenses are pretty much being done bargain basement because the President of Sierra Club that is doing this is the Attorney that is actually going to do the suit. It was supposed to go before EPA not to long ago. When they have a challenge like this there is a 60 day period for public comments.

To sum up the Arkansas suit, they wanted a contact within the Council since Arkansas is within the Council area. VP Sodamann was identified to them as a contact.

This suit could have national repercussions since this is a Federal body being sued. This is to be a FFF National item with support from the Council.

Budget for 1999

Budget will not necessarily be held to income. Most do not spend the amount budgeted.

Communications $1,500.00
Conservation (Includes Capp Creek) $13,000.00
Development $1,200.00
Education/B. Lambing Memorial Fund $5,000.00
Executive Committee $800.00
Long Casts $7,000.00
Membership $1,000.00
Miscellaneous
Managing Director $9,000.00
TOTAL $38,500.00

Roger Maler made a motion to approve budget for $38,5000.00. Second was by Dennis Slane. Budget approved unanimously.

Proposal on Changes within Federation

Prior to Secretary Maler’s proposal, President Camp asked that MD Smith send material to everyone. After reviewing, responses are to be sent to President Camp who would put together a proposal to be submitted to National.

Secretary Maler: “After having been a member of a club, on the Boards of Directors and as a club President, etc. since 1990, there is always a common thread in every discussion I get into - including at the National Conclave in discussions with people from all over; it appears the common thread is that we have no commonality territorially - west coast, east cost and so forth...... The underlying thing is that National is financially strapped because they can’t collect enough dues. We go back to the 25% participation of all the members. What I propose is pretty drastic is to make every member in every club - make it mandatory that they belong to the FFF. That is going to create all kinds of problems but in doing so, what I propose you do is cut $28 dollar fee to $15. I did the number which would put an extra $2 or $300,000 a year at the National level. Whether we could that passed, I don’t know. It might take a charter amendment. I don’t know if the Southern Council could do it. I would propose that we advance this theory to National, which they are surely to have thought of by now; maybe put it in practice at the Southern Council level. This money would solve National’s problem. Whether we could solve the territorial problem, I don’t know. In that scheme, I would see us dividing National into two sections, East and West, so that we could address our problems more closely to our territory. Let the people West solve their problems; let their money go their direction and let our money go our direction. Or even further break it down to each Council being it’s own National and only having a National Board as it relates to the issues of the National Board - not coming down into our territory and trying to solve our problems...... Very simply, the structure would be that everyone would have to be an FFF member. If you didn’t, you left all the auspices of the FFF. .... My thinking is - make everyone belong.’ Get the money to National. We would have 40,000 FFF members instead of 10,000. Of course, this gives us more political clout, gives us a solvent organization. We have shown on the Southern Council’s level that we can be financially solvent as shown by our books. National should be able to do the same. We do it because we make money at what we do. The National does not make money at what they do. Their next to last Conclave was either a loss or pretty close to a loss. I feel we could help solve the problem instead of letting it go on.

Director Jensen: “First, I’m 100% in favor of people belong to the Federation but I also have seen over the years all kinds of different types of attempts to achieve that and the most recent and most successful has been the passage of the Charter Clubs. That is the first time we have started to move in that direction. There is a tremendous amount of resistance at the National level to do this. If we went to 100% FFF I think we would lose at least 50% of the membership. So you go from 40,000 to 20,000. By reducing the dues you would still be putting more money in the budget, but you would still have to worry about the cost per member load, i.e. the printing of the Fly Fisher.”

Secretary Maler: “I have planned for that. If we left the responsibility for collecting the dues at the club level along with their club dues and they send a lump sum to Council. Pat would get 43 checks. She would then pass this on to National. They would at National then get 13 checks. They get so much paper from 10,000 members that they are buried under it. Clubs would electronically send in lists to Councils who would then forward lists to National.”

President Camp: “National would say $15.00 membership is not adequate to cover magazine.”

Director Jensen: “I have addressed this with them for years. I agree it is a very poor system they have up there. I would like to see all the dues due on January 1. They won’t go to that; they say it would cause too many problem - cause chaos. The other point I wanted to make - you indicated we ought to try it as a Council. I think legally we would have to have some changes in the by laws since under current by laws we have to parallel theirs.”

Secretary Maler: “I agree. Either their bylaws or ours would have by amendment to give us special disposition to try it as a pilot program of $15.00 per head for our 4,000 members. We send them a $45,000 check.”

President Camp: “We would be the ones going out on a limb saying to all our clubs that you are going to be 100% FFF at $15.00 a head. You are going to have to raise your dues $15.00 a member. That is the proposal we are going to have to do.”

Secretary Maler: “I assumed in my numbers that we would lose 25%. Someone said 50% - you may be closer than I am. If the numbers are right, the National has 40,000 at $15 it $600,000. Right now they are collecting $284,000 a year. So you take the 600 reduce it by 25% and you still are up $160,000 a year in the numbers - that is if you lose $25. The numbers would have to be crunched to see how the magazine publication would affect the bottom line. That was my idea and I would like you all to take a look at it to see what you think. We are either going to be an organization or we are not going to be an organization. We are comparing ourselves to T.U. and Ducks Unlimited or do we want to be a bunch of guys who go fishing.”

President Camp: “Please look at the material and get comments back to me.”

VP Easterling: “First, I think it would be great if we had 100% membership in FFF. That is something we should strive for. Right now we have 4,192 which means that 3,124 who are non members in the Southern Council. That is a big jump to get from where we are to where we want to be. The first question that springs to my mind is that we must support National.   I just don’t think we can. And the reason I say that is this lawsuit that we are about to become involved in - it’s a whole different thing when you have a national organization as part of a lawsuit as opposed to the Southern Council. My question is - If I go back to my club and tell them you’ve got to become a Federation of Fly Fishers™ member and it’s going to cost $15 more - I don’t know how your club will be but there are going to be a lot of folks in my club that are going to say - why?’ Why do we need them? There are going to be fewer people like me so the vote will go the other way.... I don’t think it’s practical. We are going to lose a lot of members. I’m afraid we will drive a wedge between the membership.”

Director Jensen: “I don’t think we make it advantageous to be a FFF member. Maybe we ought to charge non-members a nominal amount for Long Casts; maybe we should make the registration fees for non-members more than it is for members. Make it advantageous to become a member.”

Editor Fritz: “So is the answer to lose 50% percent of the members that we have in the clubs and 50% of the clubs in the United States. Again, this sounds harsh but maybe its just reality that they can be in money trouble again.”

President Camp: “The bottom line is increasing membership overall in the Federation. Ten thousand members does not make it world-wide. We’ve got to get that number up.”

Secretary Maler: “My program would have this $15 rate for 5 years and then you can bump it up by whatever indicator you like. But you would have a way to initially grab everybody mandatorily and after that you’ve got them.” Secretary Maler presented to the Board a Mission statement that had been compiled for his home club, Mid-South Fly Fishers. He indicated that this could be be applied to either the Council or to National.

President Camp: “What I want to challenge each and every one of you with is to come up with ideas on ideas we can sell to the clubs to help them recruit members within the club. That is where it lies - grassroots level - at the member level in the clubs. That is where all the work gets done in the whole Federation - the projects to get done and that’s where the membership recruitment needs to start - at the club level. The clubs need help - they need ideas. Currently we have a pretty good incentive package. For every fifteen memberships that a club sells they have their choice of a Thomas & Thomas 9' 5/6 wt two piece rod, a Sage 4 piece back packing rod, a 9' 8 wt two Sage rod or a choice of 4 Gunnison Reels. Some clubs will pre-buy fifteen memberships from the Federation - they get the prize the want, then raffle the prize of thereby getting back pretty close to what they had spent on the memberships in the first place. The memberships can then be raffled, sold or given away. But are there other things that clubs can do. But get back to me with comments that I can write to the clubs and say here try this. We need members, we need them now, we are dying on the vine nationally. We’ve got to increase membership nationally and we in the Southern Council can take the lead in showing the rest of the Country how to do this. If we can show them how to do it, we increase our membership 50% in a year, there is no reason the other Council’s can’t do it.”

Increasing Membership

The discussion turned to methods we might use to increase membership. Among those ideas presented was to make a showing at the regional shows such as the Kansas City Sports Show, the Texas Fly Fishing Show. One of the outcomes of the discussion was that we need our own display that we could take to various shows. VP Sodamann and MD Smith were directed to get details and pricing for our own display, checking on both booth style and table top setups.

President Camp is to draft a letter to help motivate club members to join and possibly send that letter to each member. Each attendee was asked to identify radio, newspapers and television providers in their area. The intention is to send an ‘open door’ letter in February.

Meeting adjourned.