Next Monthly Club Meeting & Program
Tuesday, June 17, 2025 at 7:30 p.m.
Speaker Will Present in Person
Camellia Room
at Heather Farm Community Center
1540 Marchbanks Drive, Walnut Creek
Doors Open at 6:30 p.m.
Meeting Starts at 7:30 p.m.
Invites to the Online Session to be
Sent to Members via Email
Entomology for the Fly Fisher,
with David Dempsey, Fly Fishing Instructor at Marin College
 David is a former guide; the founding president of Tamalpais Fly Fishers and has been teaching fly fishing at the College of Marin since 1992. He admits his presentation, Entomology for the Fly Fisher, can be one of those subjects that can be overwhelming or even mind numbing. He proposes it as a possible cure for insomnia and the topic to bring up when unwanted party guests won’t leave; there’s nothing like a discussion of wing venation and thoracic notum to liven up any evening. But as anglers, David thinks that knowing a few things about bugs can double and triple our catch rate.
His presentation isn’t focused on the mind-numbing detail and identifications down to a subspecies level. It’s more about where bugs live – their habitat – and how they behave that affects where we fish, the patterns we choose, and the techniques we use! David will address the questions: Why are we struggling to achieve the perfect dead drift if the fish are eating a swimming type bug? That rise – was it the gentle dimple of a trout sipping a spinner or the splashy rise of a fish desperate to catch an emerging insect? That store bought fly – the cheap import that looks like python that swallowed the village pig – is that the best match for a Baetis?
David has been fly fishing for roughly 60 years – badly for 25 of those years – but was the well-fed and difficult fish of places like Hat Creek and Hot Creek that had him rethink HOW he fished. A trout bum before most of us knew about John Gierach, he fished all over the west with forays into the South Pacific, Mexico, Belize and New Zealand – as long as there was gas money or a cheap airline fare to take advantage of. His first love has always been the dry fly and fussy fish.
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