 The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts. ** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below. The Troutbitten guys and I sit down to share a few stories — moments and experiences — from a life on...
 The Troutbitten Podcast, Episode 15, is now available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts. ** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below. Episode 15 is for story telling. And I'm joined by my friends, Bill, Josh, Austin...
With Rich behind the wheel, we traveled north forty miles toward the next wild trout. The two lane road turned into a turtleback with no lines. Then another hard left led us onto a gravel road, recently worn and torn by logging trucks and summer storms. The heavy...
In 1998, I made friends with a Border Collie. I found him at a breeder in a small town tucked into the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, and I named him (Bob) Dylan. He was four months old, the largest in a litter of four brothers. And as many stories like this go, Dylan...
Some of these caddis were swamped by the current or damaged by their acrobatic and reckless tumbling. And the broken ones didn’t last long. Large slurps from underneath signaled the feeding of the biggest trout, keying in on the opportunity for an easy meal.
Smith and I shared a smile at the sheer number of good chances. Trout often ignore caddis, because the emerging insects spend very little time on the surface, and trout don’t like to chase too often. But with a blanket hatch like this, the odds stack up, and trout were taking notice . . .
Just as the Cicada settled again, with its deer hair wing coming to rest and its rubber legs still quivering, the pool boss came to finish what he started. His big head engulfed the fly, and my patience finally released into a sharp hookset on 3X. The stout hook buried itself against the weight of a big trout . . .
Every angler goes fishing to get away from things — and most times that means getting away from people too. So whether they be friends or strangers on the water, going around the bend and walking off gives you back what you were probably looking for in the first place . . .
A Blue Winged Olive hovers and flutters next to River’s face for a moment, and he sees it. (River doesn’t miss much.) Tilting his head, he’s just about to lunge for the mayfly when a large raindrop knocks the hapless Olive from the air — more confusion in the life of a puppy. I chuckle, and River relaxes while I start to tell him a story . . .
Through all my life, these watery paths and the lonely forests accompanying them have offered me a respite — a place to escape a world full of people. And all the while, these same rivers have enabled my deepest connections with a few of those people . . .
The lost friendship transforms a river bend — that one with the ancient and hollowed-out sycamore — into an active tombstone. The towering tree with the undercut bank becomes a place to remember shared moments of casting into cool waters, where the ghosts of laughter and fond companionship persists.