After considerable discussion by the High Sierra Fly Casters’ Board of Directors it has been decided that we will change the date and location for our monthly club meetings. Our new location will be the Douglas County Elks Lodge, located at 1227 Kimmerling Road in Gardnerville, and our meeting night will change to the second Wednesday of the month. The first meeting at the new location will be on April 11th, 2012.

The Elks Club is a new facility located just west of the US Post Office on Kimmerling. In addition to a more intimate meeting area with better acoustics we will have access to the club lounge where soft drinks, beer, wine and mixed drinks will be available at a nominal cost. In order to provide more socializing time, the meeting start time will change to 7:15 p.m., with the doors open at 6:30 p.m.

The Board meeting will also change from the first to the third Wednesday of the month at our normal meeting location at The Angler’s Edge.

The February club meeting will still be at the Methodist Church on the 3rd Wednesday. Because of the annual dinner, there will be no general meeting in March.

The student films that have been entered in the annual competition are available for viewing online at http://www.facebook.com/carsonriver?sk=videos. The public is invited to view the videos and vote to “like” their favorites.

A panel of judges has reviewed the entries and will announce the winners at the Jan. 19 festival, which is free and open to the public. Winners of the “Keep Streamsides Greener, Keep Water Cleaner” competition will receive cash and other prizes and have their work shown at the film festival.

Students from schools located within the Carson River watershed were invited to enter this year’s competition, which is designed to spark creative messages about preserving, protecting and restoring the river and its sensitive shoreline.

The 1- to 3-minute information videos focus on how the Carson River benefits people and the community. All entries were required to include an “action” message that prompts people to take steps to help protect the river. The contest is sponsored by the Carson River Coalition Education Working Group.

“We’re excited to show off the entries from this year’s contest.” said coalition member and University of Nevada Cooperative Extension water quality specialist Sue Donaldson. “We have some fresh approaches to issues on the Carson River.”

Donaldson explained that riparian areas are sensitive ecosystems occurring along water courses or in water bodies. They have unique soil and plants, and work to store water in a way that helps reduce floods, stabilize streambanks from erosion, filter water for higher quality, provide habitat for birds, mammals and fish, and provide a place for recreation.

The working group includes the Audubon Society, Carson Water Subconservancy District, the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, River Wranglers, University of Nevada Cooperative Extension and River Wranglers.

If you haven’t done so already, it’s high time to renew your High Sierra Fly Casters membership for 2012. The renewal fee is only $30.00 and you can re-up at the first General Meeting of the year on January 18. Alternatively, you can mail your check to HSFC at the address on our contact page.

As in past years, all membership renewals received by January 31, 2012 will be entered in a drawing for a $50.00 gift certificate at The Angler’s Edge.

Please contact Don Stockman at 775-265-7164 with any questions.

If you haven’t visited HSFC’s Web site lately, the web development team has incorporated a few changes. Check ‘em out:

Look and Feel – The web site was badly in need of a new look, so we stopped by the cosmetics counter at Macy’s and treated it to a makeover. The new WordPress theme sports a cleaner look and uses a larger font for most of the content.

Calendar – We added a Google calendar where we’ll post upcoming events like meetings, fish outs, etc., as far in advance as possible. You can even print the calendar if you want to attach it to your refrigerator. It’s always wise to have a hardcopy backup of critically important information like upcoming fly fishing-related events.

Upcoming Events – We enhanced the list of upcoming events displayed at the top of the sidebar. You can now click on the event to get a little more about it because it’s driven by the aforementioned Google calendar. The next four upcoming events will always be listed here.

Photo Gallery – The web development team spent 500 hours programming downloaded some free software to improve the appearance and administration of HSFC’s photo gallery.

Oh, and a reminder about email addresses. Should you get frustrated with your cable/telephone/internet provider and make a change, you may very well end up with a new email address. At the bottom of each and every email notification we fire out, there’s a link that you can click to quickly and easily update your email address.

So, please take a few minutes between your naps today to point your browser at www.hsfc.us and take it for a test drive. And we hope to see y’all at our first General Meeting of 2012 on Wednesday, January 18!