I can watch football when I'm too old to fish!

[Uncle Jesse]

I parked my pickup Sunday afternoon just as the Carolina Panthers scored to go ahead of the Falcons. I had dropped my buddy Mike and started the 3/4 mile walk back to the launch site and my equipment. Mike is a transplanted Michigander, who attended college in Idaho. I think he gets withdrawal anxiety at times, as he lives south of Atlanta about 60 miles away, down where there are no trout. He is also a dedicated dad and husband, so he doesn?t get the kinks out of his leader as often as he would like.

When I arrived back at the drop off site, he was ready to go, I got on my wader, pfd, grabbed my Fishcat and headed down to the riverside. A former sand and gravel operation left a great place to put in. I gave Mike my version of the October Caddis softhackle one of the guys had posted a photo of in the last week or so. He tied it on under the dry already on his line. I had taken a couple of fish on Saturday with the pattern. Mike took the west side of the river, which was a little deeper and in the shade. I took the east side, the inside of the curve in the river. Despite my own corollary which states "the number of problems with your leader is proportional to the square of the number of flies tied on", I was fishing two soft hackles behind a bad imitation of Sandy Pittendrigh's Flat Caddis. Just like he said if you get the wing too tight it will stick up, which make a good strike indicator. I can't give you a hard count on the numbers, but the frequency of hits and fish to hand went in the fish's favor to start off. I think there were at least five hard hits before landing the first on my side of the river. I had fished the same stretch the day before, a little earlier in the day, with the results more in my favor.

The short version is fish were caught with enough numbers to make for a near perfect day for both Mike and me. A little less water down the back of his waders while trying to retrieve an errant swim fin would have made it more perfect for Mike. He managed to deposit the caddis soft hackle I had given him earlier in some irretrievable location and tied on a store bought version, which did not possess that crippled critter look I have been able to impart to my flies and was not as productive. He was able to persuade me to give him another, which also had "The Look." Thanks to Byron Haugh and Sandy for introducing me to the "October Caddis" pattern.

I found out last night after returning home, the Falcons won the game. I know Mike Smith, the head coach likes to fling line when the opportunity presents itself, must be a decent guy, right? I'll watch them when I'm too old to get out in my tube and play with the fish. My grand dad would be proud one of his grandchildren took after him, there were rods in his car when they finally put him in the nursing home in his late 80's.