The 2nd Wednesday of each month from 1-5pm is Wounded Warrior & NC Handicapped Sportsmen fishing at the NCWRC Pechmann Fishing Education Center located across from Lake Rim in Fayetteville, NC. For the past few months we have expanded the program to include any military and their family and are now advertising it as a military appreciation event. Even with this change, the program continues to struggle with attendance. I'd like to put a smiling face on it and report we lots of participation on July 8, 2009 but the facts are that there were zero in attendance when one o'clock rolled around.
We were set up to teach the basics of fly tying to those who already know how to fly fish while folks new to the sport are offered casting lessons. With no one to teach at one o'clock some of the volunteers tried tying a few new fly patterns.
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At about two-thirty this Wounded Warrior and his daughter arrived to try their hand at catching catfish with spin casting gear. Ryan our youngest volunteer and the son of a deployed soldier demonstrates how to catch them with a flyrod.
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Not to be outfished this young girl caught a bigger one then Ryan.
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A little later we were joined by a deployed soldier's wife and her young son. This young fellow was no stranger to fishing.
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We were soon joined by another wife and her two children. They all got in the act and were soon catching fish. Mom caught hers on a flyrod while the kids used spin casting gear.
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At the end of the day Ryan's mom came to pick him up. She said "fishing was not her bag" but we convinced her to catch the last fish which turned out to be a real nice one.
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And so ends our July 8th event. The reasons why we are not receiving a better turnout continues to mystify me. I'm retired military and a volunteer at the Pechmann Center. Although I have a few other places I could be on the 2nd Wednesday of each month I will continue to help the center host military appreciation events as long as one Wounded Warrior or one deployed soldier's dependent shows up. We have made some new contacts at Ft Bragg and will continue to attempt to get the word out. We know that everyone can not take Wednesday afternoon off to go fishing but surely we should be able to muster a few more - maybe at our next event on August 12th.