Wow! Another Fabulous Retreat!

Well, I'm back from the Big K and we had another incredible retreat this year! It's always such a great experience and we had the best fishing of any of the three retreats I've been to yet! Our staff did a wonderful job and were so amazing. The ladies all seemed to be natural fly fishers! All my grateful thanks to volunteers: Lisa, Katherine, Judith, Whitney, Joyce, Barb, Kelley, Lani, Sherrill and Krista! And as always thank you to our participants for sharing their journey with us!

And the Winner Is....

Mark Bachman drew the winning ticket for the quilt at the Spey Clave, and its...Greg from Washington County Fly Fishers.
Thanks to everyone who bought tickets!

Our next raffle will be for a guided trip on the Rogue River, thanks to a generous donation from our good friend David Roberts. His blog is a great introduction to this excellent fellow! If you don't win the raffle you can always book a float with him, I can vouch for his driftboat skills!

You can pick up a ticket at the Metolius Bamboo Rod Fair July 18-19th or email me for where else you can obtain one.

CfR coming this weekend to: Sandy River Spey Clave

This Saturday and Sunday, May 16 and 17th, the CfR OR North crew will have a table at the Sandy River Spey Clave (thanks Mark and Patty!). Come down and see us, this is the last chance to pick up a ticket for the quilt raffle. Mark will draw the winning ticket at then end of the day on Sunday.

Info here: http://www.flyfishusa.com/spey-clave.htm

Our next event will be the Metolius Bamboo Rod Fair:
http://www.campshermanstore.com/custom.php?page=188

3 weeks to go! Wow!

Well, as I was afraid of, once I got the blog started I could not think of anything to say. We've been raising money and awareness of CFR since February, appearing at the Sportsman's Show, the Fly Fishing Show and the NW Fly Tyers Expo, as well as various fishing clubs in the area. People have been generous and we are close to our fundraising goal for the 2009 retreat.

We have received the list of participants and alternates and are in communication with the ladies who will be going on the retreat, letting them know what they need to bring and what to expect on the weekend. It's so exciting!

Now that the ice is broken I hope to start blogging more often.

CfR Mentioned on My Favorite Podcast!

My favorite podcast right now is Fly Fishing Weekly. It's a fun, less dry one than some of the other podcasts out there about fly fishing. And the best sound quality of almost ANY podcast I listen to. The hosts Jason and Todd are regular guys, not fly fishing industry people, and they talk about all kinds of FF related things. Sometimes they get off topic but I think they are funny.

I wrote them an email a while back and offered to do an interview with them about CfR. They read part of my email, (mentioning the Stonefly Maidens website and CFR) on the show and evidently want to take me up on it! It's the February 14 episode, about 32 minutes in. This is very exciting, a chance for a lot of exposure for Casting for Recovery! I'll post about this again when we have actually done the interview.

Link to their show in the iTunes Store (free podcast)

Quilt Tickets are now on sale!

Tonight at the combined TU/Stonefly meeting I sold the first 5 tickets for the quilt that was donated by Elizabeth from our 2007 retreat. We are only selling a limited number (250) and hope to raise $1,250 if we sell them all. If anyone wants to get a ticket (they are $5 each) they can email me at robin@stoneflymaidens.org and I will get it to them. The drawing will be held on the last day of the Sandy River Spey Clave.

We'll have a booth at the Portland Fly Fishing Show this weekend: http://www.flyfishingshow.com/Portland.html

Debut Post

Welcome to the blog. Your first question may be, "What is Casting for Recovery?"
From their website: http://www.castingforrecovery.org/

Casting for Recovery® (CFR), founded in 1996, is a national non-profit support and educational program for breast cancer survivors. We enhance the lives of breast cancer survivors by offering no-cost retreats tailored to promote and support mental and physical healing through shared experiences and the learning of new skills.

I have been involved with CfR since 2006. The Women on the Fly from Southern Oregon had started doing annual retreats in that part of the state in 2004 and my fly fishing club, The Stonefly Maidens (http://www.stoneflymaidens.org/) were so inspired by them we decided to see if we could help organize a second Oregon retreat. We knew that there was a waiting list every year of women who wanted to participate.

We put on the first Oregon North retreat in 2007 and the second in 2008. June 5-7 we will host our third. If you are interested in learning more about what you can do in your area, go to the CfR website and click on Support. If you are interested in helping Oregon North specifically, please email me!

Robin Healy