Hello Long-Time FCO Members and New Members!
Let’s get to know what brings new members to the Club and what they hope to garner with their membership. If you helped bring a new member to the Club, this post may be a way for the broader membership to get to know them. After all, new connections and new friendships enrich our lives – and all the better when connections get us out on the river!
Veteran Angler Dawn Ahlgren Joins The Fly Fishers’ Club to Become a Fly Fisher
Dawn Ahlgren joined The Flyfishers’ Club in August to learn to fly fish. Her journey to becoming a Club member is an interesting and unusual one… Dawn grew up in Canby, fishing with her Mom and Dad and three siblings for any fish they could find, in any waters in Oregon, as much as they could, and with any angling technique they thought would work… except fly fishing. Jigging, trolling, casting lures or bait or still fishing were all in the repertoire. But, not fly fishing.
Flash forward to around 2020… Dawn is a vice-principal at West Linn High School and still very much an avid angler. She still lives in Canby, a single mother of three children, all of whom are grown and out of college. She is a dedicated educator who has worked in the West Linn School District for 21 years, with 18 of those years at the high school. And, Dawn still loves to fish.
Her Dad has a 30-foot Kingfisher Ocean Express and fishes for salmon as much as he can. For years, Dawn has accompanied her dad on fishing trips as much as her schedule permitted. Until recently, Dawn, herself, had a 20-foot Alumaweld Striker boat that she used to fish the Willamette and Columbia for spring and fall chinook, sturgeon, walleye, and any other species that she might encounter, using any technique that might work, except fishing with the fly.
Along the way, two of her kids left home and attended Carroll College in Helena, Montana. One played football at Carroll and, for his four years of football, Dawn never missed a game, leaving school on Friday afternoon, driving to Helena, watching the game, and then driving home. And, that drive to and from Helena is where Dawn’s interest in fly fishing really started to gather some steam.
If you have made that drive, you know that you cross the beautiful Clark’s Fork River a bunch of times on the way to Missoula, plus you cross the Blackfoot River and are in sight of Rock Creek – all fly-fishing dream destinations and rivers where you can usually spot fly anglers doing their thing. Arriving in Helena, you are a stone’s throw from the famed Missouri River. With her interest in fly fishing increasing and when she had time between driving and her sons’ football games, Dawn would head to the Missouri River and watch people fly fish, making her all the more interested in taking up the sport.
Now flash forward to July, 2025… Kids out college. Sold her boat. Dad getting older and doesn’t fish as much. And now, a full blown desire to learn to fly fish and some time on her hands. Dawn googles “fly fishing lessons.” An entry comes up about The Flyfishers’ Club of Oregon, its purposes, dinner meetings, upcoming picnic and impending Essentials of Fly-Fishing Class. Dawn went all in and signed up to become a member of the Club, then signed up for the picnic and then for the class.
She attends the class and the picnic and is now armed with the basics of casting a fly rod and other essential fly fishing information gleaned from the class. The result is that Dawn is now on the water and casting a fly whenever her schedule allows. While she has yet to catch a fish on the fly, she is determined to become a competent fly angler. On her experience with the Club and the class to date, Dawn says, “Everyone in the Club has been so friendly and helpful. The class was beyond what I expected and has me going in the right direction in becoming a fly angler.”
Dawn looks forward to becoming active in the Club and plans to attend the October 23 dinner meeting. She hopes to meet members and join them on the water to try out her newly acquired casting skills. If you run into her at the October 23 meeting, be sure to welcome her to the Club and maybe arrange to take her fishing. If you do, you won’t regret spending some time with her.
by Paul Franklin