Well, I made it back to good ole hot and humid Florida today. I got to spend a couple of hours with Jack and wireguy at Gates for lunch and at their campsite Thursday afternoon. They are a couple of great guys that I'm glad I finally got to meet! Got to see some of Jack's cool flies and furled leaders and got to cast a few minutes with wireguy's big ole bamboo rod. I'll need to lift weights before I cast that sucker again!
I flew up on Aug. 2 for a planned vacation, long before I really knew of FAOL and the Fish-In they were having the week after I had to fly back home. My in-laws have a camping spot way down the AuSable River on Foote Dam Pond so we ended up there for the first 5 days of my trip. Caught lots of smallmouth bass, rock bass, perch, and bluegills on basically the same flies I use down South to catch Bluegills. When we made it back to Grayling, I had the chance to go dry fly fishing with one of the locals......man, that's some crazy fishing!!!! Flies size 20 to 30! I could barely see them. It took me a little while to get used to this type fishing......I had never been trout fishing, but in the end....I ended up catching my first trout.....a whopping 7 inch brown!
I went with a guide friend of mine on Friday afternoon down south of the Mio Dam and using streamers, hoppers and droppers, and dry flies, I caught 6 rainbows and 2 browns.....nothing bigger than 12 inches but a fun day anyway! Finished fishing at 10pm, made it back to the in-laws by 11pm, went to bed, up at 2:30am to drive down to Flint to catch the flight back home! All in all....a wonderful trip! Fished 6 days....caught fish all 6 days. That's good for a amateur like me!

Regards,
Doug