Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival Report

[Dalton Terrell]

I am writing to report the great weekend we had at the 12th annual Virginia Fly Fishing and Wine Festival, where TPFR/FFF was a Bronze Level Sponsor with a 20'x30' dedicated tent. First off, I would like to thank all of our volunteers from TPFR, including Dan & Melody Davala, John Bilotta, Trent Jones, Tom & Tracy Urman, Miles Townes and myself. 

On Saturday, we had great weather and a great turnout, but on Sunday the weather was a bit of a damper with chilly temperatures and steady rain. Both days, Dan and John taught a paid lesson in spey casting before the festival kicked off while our other volunteers set up our tent and drank copious amounts of coffee. Inside of our spacious tent we had our new 40" HD TV playing a continuous loop of a casting demonstration video, a laptop to sign people up for free one year FFF memberships, a fly tying table with five vices to help teach kids and beginners to tie flies and an assortment of promotional materials for TPFR and the FFF. In addition to this main tent, we had a satellite tent set up by The Bobs of Antietam Fly Anglers, another FFF Charter Club that also helped offset some of our costs this year, dedicated to free casting lessons from our six FFF Certified Casting Instructors in attendance. Throughout the days, we interacted with many people, getting nearly 50 people signed up with free memberships to the FFF, helping dozens of people tie their first flies and improving the casting of a few more, as well as interacting with several from the DC area that had not yet heard of TPFR. In addition to this interaction, Dan and John held two organized spey casting demos on the water and we held a seminar on how to become an FFF Certified Casting Instructor each day. 

I didn't manage to take any pictures, but I believe that Tom and Melody took some that they may want to add to this post.

Thanks everyone again,
Dalton

[John Bilotta]

I agree. It was a great time. Thanks everyone who made it out.

John

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[Smallies&Shad]

Kudos to all involved in making TPFR (and spey casting and FFF and the Potomac River watershed and fly tying and the Antietam club) an integral and growing part of the VA Fly Fishing Festival. Also, a shoutout to Rob Snowhite for his informative, packed power point talk on shad fishing the Potomac and Rapp. Great spey technique demos from Master Casters Dan and John.