On the whiteboard, the teacher has sketched a shoreline and subsurface topography, and students are busily researching the habitat in their textbooks.

But this isn't a college or high school biology class. It's the Washington Elementary School Fly Fishing Club, a voluntary lunchtime program that's teaching fourth- and fifth-graders to tie flies and catch fish.

The club is the brainchild of Mt. Lebanon School District health and phys ed teacher Ron Wilcher, who started the program with 11 students last year.

"Everybody we talked to said we were crazy for starting with kids this young," he said. "But being in an elementary school, those were the students available to us."

Having worked for some 30 years with the school's soccer program, Wilcher said he was looking for something beyond team sports to encourage kids to turn off the computer and go outside. A lifelong angler, he wrote up a program that combines instruction on entomology and life cycle issues, fly tying, knot tying and casting, and culminates in several fly-fishing field trips. With the school district's approval, he solicited donations of tying materials, tools, fly rods, reels and lines and started recruiting kids.

Now in its second year, the fly-fishing club has received donations from Gander Mountain, Sportsman's Warehouse, trout guide Tom Zacoi, youth mentoring group Family Tyes, Otto Beck Co., Gamma Frog Hair, International Angler and a grant from the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

This year's club started when students returned from Christmas break. Onto each elementary-sized classroom desk is mounted a tying vice, and members have access to hooks, wire, feathers, fur, thread, tying tools and instructional materials. The club has doubled in size since last year. Wilcher said some veterans of last year's club are helping to mentor this year's beginners.

Patrick Ehland, 10, said no one in his family fishes, but he thought it'd be a fun break from organized sports. Brynn Fuller-Becker, 10, said since she joined the club her dad has gotten interested in fly fishing.

"Today we're tying a caddis larva," said 11-year-old Liam Devlin. "Caddis is a kind of fly and the larva is a stage in its life. You have to make [the fly] realistic -- like, you have to make the segments that a larva would have, the head and legs and everything."

"It's complicated," said Alex Hartman, 10, "but not too complicated. "The hardest part is probably learning to tie the flies, working with the materials. The funnest part is learning something new and going out to fish. The whole point of fishing is to bond with the person you're fishing with, that's what my grandpa used to tell me."

Bill Nagle, a retired investment banker who works part-time in the Moon Gander Mountain fly-fishing department, volunteers one day with Wilcher's club. After noticing the kids struggling with the patterns last year, he wrote, illustrated and bound a manual that's given to each club member and walks them through the entire program.

"I've been cognizant of the fact that the industry is graying," he said. "You go out on the stream and there are very few younger adults or children out there. What I've been trying to do is help get more young kids involved."

Among other things, the manual illustrates the life cycle of a caddis fly with recipes and step-by-step instructions on how to tie patterns that imitate each stage.

"We're teaching them the whole notion of entomology starting with caddis, because that's the easiest to tie," said Nagle.

At Washington Elementary, the club has inspired spin-off instruction in art, science and phys ed classes. Wilcher says his goal is to facilitate a program in which every fourth and fifth grader in the school, whether or not they're in the clubs, could be instructed in fly casting and fish.

"Down the road," he said, "the big vision is to be an ambassador to other schools in the district to launch similar programs there."