The Newington Project healing Waters Program held its monthly meeting on 5/25/17 in the “Red Room” at the Newington, VA and was well attended.  Twelve vets were in attendance supported by seventeen volunteers.  This month’s project was to tie a Barr’s Bouface Leech.  The fly although difficult was no match for our vets whose fly tying skills continue to improve.  We will be using this fly on our outing next month to the exclusive Limestone Trout Club located in East Canaan, CT.

This month we also started something new.  We scheduled an informal casting clinic from 8:30 AM until 9:15.  Rain impacted the clinic so we were forced to move indoors holding a knot tying class instead teaching the Clinch knot and Orvis knot.  We plan to hold informal instruction in the shortened 45 minute segments before the regular tying seminars on the go forward.  Topics to include, casting, Entomology, reading the water, life cycle of a bug etc…

Before breaking from our meeting, we commended the vets who have become actively attending our meetings.

• 25 vets have participated in 2017. 17 of these vets have been attending on a regular basis and 5 have had perfect attendance.
• 49 different vets have participated in the program between 2016 and 2017. 6 vets have participating on a regular basis throughout 2016 and 2017.

Next month we have an outing scheduled at the Limestone Trout Club.  We have projected total vets and volunteers for 2017’s Limestone Outing to be at 35 compared with 31 in 2016.  17 Vets are expected to attend this event vs. 12 last year.  This year we will be holding the Limestone outing on a Saturday to allow for a longer day and more time on the water as well as a burger and dog cookout at the clubhouse.