“It is with a heavy heart I tell you the carp have already spawned and have left for deep water. I fished for six hours last week on Wednesday with two friends and we only caught one 10 pounder. The rest of the fish showed no interest in feeding. So the fish out at Topaz Lake is a no go this year. The way of carp love is a deeply mysterious thing. Last year June 5th was great and the year before May 22 was great for carp fishing. It happened real early this year.”

We say exclusive because membership will be restricted to active HSFC members. When you register, your credentials will be verified against dozens of databases worldwide an Excel spreadsheet maintained by Don Stockman. We simply want to ensure that our vast knowledgebase of fly fishing information benefits HSFC members – not everyone else out there surfing the Inter-webs.

If you’ve been on the Inter-webs for more than, like, ten minutes, you’re probably familiar with this type of message board/forum application. Many of you likely already belong to other forums. Ours is much the same.

We’re starting this thing out with just a couple of boards. If you seek a fishing partner or want to let fellow HSFC’ers know where you’re gonna be, there’s the “Hookups” forum. If you’ve got great information to share regarding a recent outing, there’s the “Fishing Reports” forum (I came up with that name all by myself). And, we’ve got a third forum with a few helpful hints and some basic rules (etiquette) we’d like everyone to follow.

Oh, and just to keep things honest, we’ve implemented special software named FFLD – Fly Fishing Lie Detector. Any numeric value posted in the Fishing Reports forum is automatically divided by two. Your “30 fish day” will be automatically corrected and posted as your “15 fish day.” Fragile egos will be nurtured; the software rounds up.

Oh, and speaking of honesty, we want everyone to create a user name or set their display name as their real name. For example, “KenBaldwin” is acceptable. “StuffFallsOfffMyCarOnHwy88″ isn’t.

So, let’s take the HSFC Message Board for a test drive and see what she’ll do. Please take a few minutes to sign up at http://www.hsfc.us/forum and click Register. Since we’re verifying membership, please don’t expect an immediate response. But you shouldn’t have to wait more than 24 – 48 hours; I’ll try to keep a close eye on things for the next week or so.

If you have any questions, the HSFC Message Board Task Force will be in attendance at the General Meeting Wednesday night.

The first will be Saturday, May 19, at Indian Creek Reservoir. Then, on Sunday, May 20, Mike Phillips may host a bonus fish out at Topaz Lake if the conditions are right.

More information will be available at our General Meeting on May 9 and, as always, keep an eye on your email inbox for current information!