07 Apr 2022 - West Central Indiana

[jdfog2]

Hi again all,

In celebration of my son graduating college soon we splurged and spent some money on a guided trip down a local Smallmouth Creek.

Fished HARD for 8 hours - in the cold, and a bit of rain here and there. Even a brief pelting of high velocity ice pellets (I think you westerners have a name for that stuff "grapel" (granular pellets) or gripel (granular ice pellets) ? Anyway, it's that stuff that's bigger than sleet, but not really hail. It was thick and whatever it's called, it stung! (I know "wa wa wa")

Anyway, I found out that even though my knee is better, my shoulder is not happy about slinging a 7wt. sink tip with weighted flies all day long. (Except for the few stretches where I was throwing a floating line) But I'll get over it - there's worse things, right ?

I also found out why Scott fly rods cost $900...

I thought our guide worked for us, but apparently he had us working for him like the fish we'd catch would solve world hunger !
He has a huge enthusiastic personality and through his encouragement WILLED us to catch fish even though the fish weren't wanting to cooperate. (Almost everything was against us weather and conditions wise) I have to hand it to him. I've never fished with a better "coach" and teacher (and cheerleader!) He made it a good time even though most people wouldn't have called it a good time. (Attitude may not be "everything" but it's an important thing)

I will add to this that we fished about 7 miles of water.
I added the pics of son and two of his fish after I finished this in two reply posts - took me a while to figure that out.