Sometimes, fly anglers can be a bit obsessive about their hobby.
Wealthy Elementary 4th grade teacher Winona Tinholt isn’t obsessive about it, but she is very enthusiastic about fly fishing, and now she’s sharing her passion for the sport with a new fly fishing club for 4th graders at the school.
This spring, on the advice of Wealthy Elementary principal Stephanie Olson, Tinholt applied for a mini grant from the Foundation for supplies for the club. Included are Echo practice fly rods, textbooks, and fishing line for learning knot tying. The cost of the equipment? $606. The value of having someone like Tinholt introduce students to the sport? Priceless.
“We had meetings once a week after school,” Tinholt says. “At the very beginning, we established some essential questions and essential skills. So we looked at what fish eat and what the different bugs are. Mayflies, caddis, stone flies, larva. We looked at where fish live and how they move. Then, once we’d looked at those essential questions, we learned essential skills like casting and knot tying.”
Tinholt has taken private casting lessons from some of the best teachers in the sport. She was able to share some of what she’s learned in those lessons with her students. “They’re casting really, really well now,” she says. “They learn so fast. It’s amazing.”
From the moment Tinholt decided to start the club, it’s been remarkably popular. “We could only take 16 students, all in the 4th grade, but we had so much interest we could have had 60,” she says. Now she’s working with the local Orvis store and Trout Unlimited, hoping to put together an in-store class or on-the-water activity for the club next year. Tinholt also hopes to have the 4th graders who were in the club this year return next year as 5th graders to help teach the new students in the club.”
Thank you, Foundation donors, for helping Tinholt offer this opportunity to our students!
