....in the warmth of our lodgings on a st. patrick's night, anticipating
better weather for fishing in the 'morrow, tom brown prepared a beef
wellington with steamed asparagus and potatoes while i (and others)
liberally sampled his tanqueray (green bottle), heineken (green bottle),
and le mistral (green wine g). we watched a bit of the tourney, talked
of common interests, chuckled about our inadequacies, and enjoyed an
evening of fellowship reminiscent of the rites of the rosicru...uh...we
shared the wonders of a democracy persevering under the
moronic...uh...we ate, drank, talked, and went to sleep with plans to go
fishing early the next morning. mark, joe, tom, and i planned to check
out a recommended stream. when chris (photo on abp) came out to the
anti-clave last october, he suggested we try this place...i'll call it
buster's creek. i'd never fished it before, so whatthehell.

after a bit of work herding the crowd up the dirt and loosely graveled
roads to buster's, tom and joe went upstream, mark and i headed
downstream. tom and joe didn't speak of their fishing too much...a sign
of either their desire to keep secrets from their friends, or they got
skunked. mark and i had an exceptional day of fishing and catching. all
of our fish were browns (samples on abpf) ranging from 8-11". more than
decent non-hatchery fish in the blue ridge. we lost a couple that were
over 12"...one broke off my 6x, i'm sure it was over 14". all of the
fish came out of deeper pools, none were in pockets or riffles. still
adjusting to temperature i assume. however, in one section of the
stream i saw a decent hatch of mayflies and there were rising fish. one
of the very few times i've ever targeted rising wild trout in nc. we
(well, after mark finally listened to me about bwo's and parachute
adams, "we") caught as many as 4 fish out of some of the longer, deeper
pools. not at all bad for a trip with such a dismal i-40 beginning.
further evidence that ol' ht was right about not letting the weasels get
ya.

jeff