Pre-TR Report

As mother has a nasty habit of loving her canine home companions--Bear, who
it is not necessary to pepper spray nor shoot with a large caliber weapon--
to death with food, I have to take the dear animal up into the Pisgah for a
weekly run behind or in front of my ATV. Bear is quite the good sport about
it all, well at least since the Citizens Canine Training that we went thru
to get him to where he wouldn't run the opposite direction from me everytime
I called his name! Now when I stop by mother's place, everyday, Bear goes
bananas. If I let him out the front door, he heads straight for my car, and
if the front window is down, he winds up in the back seat ready to
go...anywhere!

I decided to get him acclimated to water this AM. So I took him over to
Greg's place http://www.optimisticrv.com/ for a swim in the confluence of
Upper and Steele Creeks. Not one to be overly trusting of his Alpha
partner, Bear didn't seem to want to come to me, when I was in water over
his head? So I assisted him, via choke collar and water buoyancy. After
the forth of fifth attempt, Bear decided it was ok to dog-paddle to me
across the stream about 50 or so feet. We played in the water a while and
then decided to cast a fly or too many.

I tied on a dry fly with dropper, cast it out to about mid-point of the
stream, right where the two streams come together. I looked back to see
what Bear might be into and WHAM! a 16 to 18 incher took my dry fly, before
I knew what had happened! I fought him for about 2o or 30 seconds before he
managed to free himself from the hook? I know his size--though I don't
actually know the sex of the fish, but will say it was a he for whatever
reason--cause he came out of the water twice and took line off of my reel
like it was nothin'.

Havin' lost a really nice fish, I decided to continue pluggin' along with
the same set-up. Unfortunately, I only had one other taker, on the nymph
dropper that also got away, before I lost the nymph to the weeds behind me.
I continued fishin' the dry fly and managed to hook into a nice little
bream? Not long after I had decided to tie on a black and olive
woolly-bugger, some of the campgrounds occupants made their way to where I
was fishin'. It was a couple of family units with 3 small boys, dads and
moms with spinni' rigs. They pointed out some large trout on their side of
the stream, but they were out of my castin' range. I packed up and let them
have the pool to themselves, as they were payin' customers and I was a
non-payin' interloper.

Since Bear did so well entertaining himself and stayin' out of my castin'
lane, I have decided to take him fishin' with me in the morn, on my favorite
stream--Uppe_ C_eek. I'll post a TR tomorrow, for those interested in
canine fishin' mis-adventures!

Op --over and out--