Monthly Meetings (Sept. – April) are held on the first Wednesday of each month at:
The Thirsty Goat restaurant,
3040 Cahill Main, Fitchburg
Meetings start at 6:30PM
Many members come early to socialize over dinner before the meeting, the restaurant serves a wide variety of reasonably priced items.
We welcome non-members to join us for a meeting or two, and then decide if we are their kind of organization.
2022-2023 Meeting Schedule
Following a serious fire at the Maple Tree restaurant in McFarland on October 5th, both the Wisconsin Smallmouth Alliance and the Badger Fly Fishers have located a new site for our monthly meetings. The Thirsty Goat restaurant, 3040 Cahill Main, Fitchburg, will be our new monthly meeting site. The Thirsty Goat offers a quiet room which will seat 50 people, excellent and affordable food, and a small bar in the room serving multiple refreshments. Meetings for both the WSA and BFF will begin with a social hour/dinner starting at 5:30 PM and the general meeting starting at 6:30 PM. Currently, we will be able to order off the menu and, as long as enough meals are ordered at each meeting, we will be able to continue this practice indefinitely. The alternative will be a buffet-style set up with fewer choices. Therefore, we encourage members to join us for dinner if it will work into your schedule. Except for the month of October, all WSA and BFF meetings will occur on the first Wednesday of the month as listed below. In October the WSA meeting will be at the Thirsty Goat on Tuesday, October 18th. Please note that the WSA and BFF meetings will alternate each month. We look forward to seeing you at our new home.
The following are the dates for our bimonthly meetings:
October 18, 2022 – WSA meeting with Mike Norris
November 2, 2022 – BFF meeting with Rich Ostoff
December 7, 2022 – WSA meeting with Hunter Dorn
January 4, 2023 – BFF with Dan Donovan
February 1, 2023 – WSA with Pat Ehlers
March 1, 2023 – BFF with Tim Landwehr
April 5, 2023 – WSA auction
May 3, 2023 – BFF with ?=
We look forward to seeing you soon!
February 1, 2023 Speaker – Pat Ehlers
Pat Ehlers lives in Franklin, WI. Pat opened his fly shop, The Fly Fishers Inc. 35 years ago in 1988. Pat has guided throughout Wisconsin and the Great Lakes as well as in Montana and Alaska.
He has taught fly-fishing schools, fly-casting and fly tying classes around the country and also appears as a speaker and instructor at shows and seminars throughout the U.S.
Pat is a member of the Scientific Anglers’ Ambassador Team and an Echo Fly Rod Co. Design Team (Vancouver, WA) member and has designed fly rods developed for warm-water and saltwater fly-fishing, the Echo Edge84 series and the EPR series. Pat is a contract designer/royalty fly tier and consultant for Rainy’s Flies of Logan, UT and has designed fly tying tools bearing his name for the Renzetti Co. of Titusville, FL. Pat also is a tackle consultant and trip host for Frontiers Travel of Warrendale, PA as well as his shop, The Fly Fishers being Frontiers’ official tackle vendor.
The DVD, Tying the Flies of Pat Ehlers – Bass Flies is a product of Pat’s and the production company he is a partner in, Four Reels Player Productions. He is a regular contributor to American Fly Fishing Magazine and has written for other publications along with having contributed to a number of books. Photography is also one of his pursuits and lends itself very well to his business.
Pat is a pro team or pro staff member for the following companies: Mercury Marine Pro Team, Vexus Boats Flippin, Arkansas, Minn-Kota and Humminbird Electronics through Dunkin-Lewis of Birmingham, Alabama and Sitka Hunting Gear. He is a Pro-Team member of his sponsoring Vexus dealer Angler’s Edge of Loves Park, IL. Pat belongs to the National Professional Anglers Association (NPAA). He has done promotional appearances for Skoal Outdoors and had been a co-owner and an instructor for The Chequamegon Bay Smallmouth School in Wisconsin for 16 years. Pat has served as a retail advisory board member of AFFTA (American Fly Fishing Trade Association).
Pat has appeared in newspaper and magazine articles, makes regular appearances on radio programs and has also appeared on numerous TV shows throughout the country; both regionally and nationally including Fox, ESPN and The Outdoor Channel networks.
Pat participates in local and regional bass tournaments as well as “fly only” bass tourneys in the western United States. He has participated in a number of saltwater tournaments and also fishes extensively for saltwater species. In chasing both fresh and saltwater fish his fishing has taken him across the US from Alaska to Florida, as well as Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Central America, South America and the South Pacific.