Fly Fishing International Honors Pineville Anglers for Commitment to Education
[ad_1]
In the mid-1970s, Bill Morrison was a teenager reading about fly fishing in Field and Stream magazine. He borrowed his grandfather’s fiberglass fly rod and bought his popper bug at Security Sporting Goods, the only sporting goods store in Alexandria at the time. Then he went out to his family’s farm pond and taught himself how to fly fish.
Over the past 50 years, he has been fly fishing back and forth, passing on his knowledge of fly fishing to other anglers.
On Wednesday, Fly Fishers International recognized Morrison of Pineville as one of two winners of the 2022 FFI Fly Fishing Skills Education Award. The ceremony was an online event using Zoom. The event attracted fly-fishing participants from across the country, including Alaska, New England and Florida, Morrison said. He was nominated by New Orleans locals and others. Last year, Morrison was named the 2021 Fly Fisher of the Year by the Gulf Coast Council of Fly Fishers International.
Fly Fishers International is one of the world’s largest fly fishing associations with 300 member clubs, including Kisatchie Fly Fishers of which Morrison is a member. FFI has approximately 12,000 members in over 20 countries. FFI presents 10 awards each year for casting, fly tying and teaching.
“This was a great honor for him,” said his wife, Debbie Morrison. “He was recognized for his achievements in casting his flies and his willingness to share his fishing skills with others and promote fly fishing.”
Morrison has been with the Kisatchie Fly Fishers for six years and said the award was a recognition of the club’s commitment to education. The club has about 90 members.
“The club has a fairly extensive educational program that teaches fly casting, fly fishing in general, and fly tying,” he said. “We meet twice a month at the West Side Library. This commitment to education is one of the reasons he was awarded this time. Department.”
The club meets twice a month on Mondays at 6:30 pm at the Westside Regional Library. Before each meeting, Fry has his casting practice at 5:30 pm. The club has several FFI certified casting his instructors like Morrison who can help people learn the “inside and out” of fly casting.
“We have a fly tying class on the second Monday of the month,” Morrison says, usually leading or teaching others. “We have a really active fly tying class for our club every month. We also have a regular meeting on the 4th Monday of every month.”
He also directs the Kisatchie Fly Fishers Club’s annual Fly Fishing 101 and chairs the club’s tying committee.
In his biography on the FFI site, Morrison created a series of “how-to” videos for other clubs, explaining how to conduct meetings and tying sessions via Zoom, and sharing his expertise in remote learning. It is written that
Among his many projects was the initiation of the club’s annual ‘Mixed Bag Contest’. As anglers catch different species, the database can be used to learn about the fish and their habitats.
“Seeing others learning about fly fishing and enjoying the sport we love gives us great satisfaction and joy,” Morrison said.
Louisiana has numerous fly-fishing opportunities, from the salt marshes of the South to the local lakes and streams of Central Louisiana, he said. Fly fishermen can catch the same species as fishermen with traditional gear, including carp, blue gill and largemouth bass.
For saltwater fly fishing, Morrison says the Big Lake area south of Lake Charles and Pointe aux Chennes south of Houma are great for kayaking and fly fishing.
“Many of us use fly rods to fish swamps from kayaks because fly rods work very well to get up shallow swamps,” he said. “But those two areas are my favorite areas to fish in salt water.”
When it comes to freshwater fly fishing, he likes all of the typical places traditional gear fishermen fish. All are excellent fly fishing areas.
“So many people in Louisiana think fly fishing is for fishing in the mountains of Arkansas and Colorado,” Morrison said.
[ad_2]
Source link
