June 10, 2023 - Tournament Day 1

[FishnDave]

In Cotter, AR, is a fly shop called Dally's Ozark Fly Fisher. They run an annual flyfishing contest called Dally's All-Species Odyssey. It's a 2 -day event with 2-person teams of fly anglers. There's a list of 34 species of fish that reside in Arkansas (there's more species than that in Arkansas, of course), and the goal is to catch as many species from the list as you can. Most species caught wins. Each species is assigned points based on the perceived rareness or difficulty to catch on fly. Points come into play as tie-breakers for teams that finish with the same number of species as another team. Team members must fish together, but don't need to stand next to each other. Size of the fish doesn't matter. Fish must be photographed with the team's special identifying item in the picture, and the picture submitted via an app. You can fish anywhere in Arkansas. You fish 12-ish (shotgun start from the fly shop) to 8pm on Day 1, and 6am to Noon on Day 2, and you have to be back at the fly shop before @ 12:30 pm.Anyway...I fished it with a buddy LAST YEAR, and we finished tied for 2nd place, but lost the tie-breaker by the smallest possible amount of 5 pts. So we got 3rd Place last year with 12 species.Just like like last year, we ended Day 1 tied for 1st Place with 9 species.We caught Ozark Bass, Longear Sunfish, Green Sunfish, Smallmouth Bass, Bluegill, Redear Sunfish, Freshwater Drum, Yellow Bass, and Channel Catfish. Below is just some of the fish caught:We also caught 4 species that didn't count.... Creek Chub, Hornyhead Chub, Redspotted Sunfish, and Striped Shiner.