I just returned from the Fish-In this evening. Long drive home (about 7 hours). It was great finally putting faces to names. Betty is definitely the sweetheart she appears to be online, and Carey is a lucky guy. As "ol' blue" said, after I spotted his camp, he pulled up shortly therafter in his blue pickup. Using that as a clue, I was able to track him down on the stream by loitering around his truck until he finally showed up. He probably thought I was a stalker at first. Drew (zimrx) found us on the stream as mentioned earlier. He and Ol' Blue were only able to stay a couple of days. As mentioned, the fishing is definitely not what you expect when you think of "dumb stockers". Charlie Reading of Reading's Fly Shop, who gave us the presentation on Tuesday evening, says that once the gullible fish are caught, the remainder are really tough. There are few and very sparse hatches. Ol' Blue and Zimrx missed the best presentation on Thursday evening. Jim Rogers, who is an FFF certified casting instructor gave us about five hours of his time and worked with each of us to improve our casting. Jim is one of the guys who teaches and certifies the instructors, and he really knows his stuff. I would like to say that after his instruction, I can now cast all of my line and half of the backing, but DREAM ON. I have to say that I really don't like fishing in a crowd, but I still had a good time. I did go down to the Niangua River yesterday morning, and watched an elderly couple land a couple of trout, and they were the only people I saw over about a half mile of river, except for a couple of canoes that went by. Hugo (Thunderthumbs) is a perpetual motion fishing machine, and Tim (tierm) is cut from the same cloth. I'm glad to be back home (ran out of clean clothes), but had a good time.

Larry Compton