Posts Tagged ‘the featherweights’

One of the google search terms that people seem to find my site using include sexy women wearing waders.  Now, this might have something to do with the fact that I’ve written about “The Featherweights,” the first all women team to compete in the Canadian Fly Fishing Championships.  Or maybe it’s just because I’ve written about women, including sexy women, and women in waders; whatever it is, people are searching, looking and are interested.

Now first my own disclaimer – I am SURE that all the women who competed with The Featherweights would object to being solely described as sexy women in waders.  Although I can assure you that indeed, they were all quite sexy.  But far more than just sexy, they are great anglers – some are quite accomplished in guiding, fish biology, and other professional pursuits.  But.. as a man that is very heterosexual – I gotta admit they are all quite “sexy” as well.

Now, I had the privilidege of having my picture taken together with three of the women but it must have been with someone else’s camera as my camera, sadly, did not have the image.   But I do have some individual shots of me with some of the women – they all graciously agreed to have their picture taken with this dirty old fly angler.  For the ones that I don’t seem to have on my own camera, I shall be doing my best to make special arrangements to rectify this!

A shot of the entire team:

From Left To Right: Dil Perera, Brenda Atherne, Jeanne Jenkins, Silvia D’Amelio, Chari Cohen

Ok, for those of you that don’t believe that such beautiful women would ever agree to pose beside a guy like me, well… photographs never lie, right?  Ok, ok… forget about the fact that “photoshopping” can create images of just about whatever you want – I promise you these images are legitimate!

Yuck!  Red eye.. but by the time this picture was taken, we were all exhausted, so it’s appropriate. The good looking person in this picture is Brenda Atherne.

And the good looking person in this picture is Chari Cohen.

And the good looking person in this picture is Jeanne Jenkins.

So, sadly I’m missing the picture of myself with Dil, Silvia and Jeanne – that should have been a really nice foursome shot.  I’ll put out the word and see if anyone has it – and if not, well – I’ll just have to hit the river with Silvia and Dil, together or separately, and make sure I have a camera.

But there’s more about Jeanne.. and she has given me permission to share this.  Jeanne has a tatoo.  Well.. I’m told she has three tatoos.  And no, I have not seen them all..   But that brings me to something I’ve often thought about.  Yes, all three of Jeanne’s tatoos.. (get your mind out of the gutter) – but getting a tatoo myself.  I don’t know what the fascination is, but I’ve thought about.  Problem is, I could never decide “what” or “where.”  Jeanne however, has given me some specific ideas of “what” with this one of hers:

That is the “Jeannie Fly,” a salmon fly that Jeanne is sporting.  Awesome idea, huh?  Sadly, there is no “Ian Fly” and I don’t know what my favorite fly is, or what among my favorites would make for a good tatoo.. but I’m thinking about.

Anyhow, those are some of the beautiful (and sexy) women who participated in this year’s Canadian Fly Fishing Championships, and every one of them is much more than just beautiful or sexy.

So here I am, tying flies.  Turns out that glass beads are not allowed on flies in the Canadian Fly Fishing Championships, which begin at 7AM – 6 hours from now. I’ll have to leave my home around 5:30 to ensure I get to the meeting place, where we’ll learn where our first beat is.

I’m sure it is a big job to arrange and plan the competition, but there are some areas I think could have been improved.  For one, the rule changes – it seems that there were several rule changes from the first set of rules that were published on the website.  This is just not good enough. Once rules are published, there shouldn’t be any changes.

Secondly, the Captains of each team received a package with the information on where the beats would be, but they didn’t match up to the actual schedule.  As well, there was only one set of maps and information.  For guys that don’t have access to a photo-copy machine, this makes it awfully difficult for everyone to have the necessary information.  I can understand that they’d want to provide information to captains only, but surely printing off copies for each individual on a team would not have been that expensive or hard to do.

So between that and having to retie a bunch of flies that I originally tied up with glass beads, I’m a bit frustrate as I’m going to get less than 3 hours sleep before the competition starts. Ah well.. should be a great day anyhow! My team captain is very gung ho – so much so that I didn’t have time to do much flirting with any of the women on the “All Ladies” team – The Featherweights.  But, this evening at the barb-que, I did get to meet them!  And what a fine bunch they all are. Dil is as pretty in real life as she was in the centrefold spread of the Sunday Toronto Star a couple of weeks ago.  Actually, they are all great! Sylvia drew the same rotation as me, so maybe I’ll have a chance to speak with her and check out her fly fishing skills, you know? ;

I also had an opportunity to speak with Jeanne Jenkins who just flew in from P.E.I.  She seems like a very knowledgeable and great angler, and very engaging to talk with.  Maybe I’ll have to take some time and go down east one of these days for some fly fishing.

The Bar-B-Que was great! Steaks provided by “Better Beef” of Guelph, Ontario – very very good steaks, along with baked potato and salad.  And I sampled a beer I’ve never had before, but I can’t recall the name of it right now.

I also had the opportunity to meet with some of Canada’s greatest fly fishing personalities as well.  Ian Martin was there, and I was able to chat with him over dinner as he sat right across from me.  How’s that for feeling intimidated at a gathering of fly fishers?

I also was able to meet with the team from Quebec – very funny and charming guys, all of them.  Claude (last name escapes me right now) has won the World Championships of Fly Tying three times.  Wow!  Here I am shaking his hand!  And his teammates are going to put on a very strong showing as well – Bernard, who I spoke for a while, fly fishes about 40 hours  per week during the spring and early summer months.

John, from the North West Territories team and I shared some thoughts and discussions about the differences between fly fishing here in Ontario and what they are used to way up north.   Imagine going for walleye on the fly!  I’ve never tried that, before.

I should try to get a few hours of shut-eye here – and hopefully won’t have any problems waking up at 5AM in order to be on time at the Elora Conservation Area first thing in the morning.  I do know that my first beat will be on the Conestoga River – which will be interesting.  Getting the Conestoga first thing is a bit intimidating as well.  That is going to be some tough fishing, I know.

I should also throw some fly tying gear into the back of the van, so that between sessions, I can tie some more flies up that I’ll probably need.  Too much to do!!