An Adventure With Austin

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again expecting different result.  A. Einstein

In our case, we keep expecting the drive to the river to be shorter than the last time we made the same trip.  Yep, we drove back out to State College, PA again this past weekend. Although it was only one car this time, so we shared the driving, which is definitely a sign of moderate sanity.    

You see, Doug's friend Austin came up from Birmingham for the weekend, and we were determined to show him some of the great fly fishing for trout we have north of the Mason-Dixon line.  With Austin being a former trout fishing guide in Wyoming, what choice did we have?  Nature doesn't provide any natural environments for trout in the deep south, and so the last few years Austin has had to settle for warm water and saltwater game fish, so it was our duty to take him to a place where the waters ran clear, cold and teemed with trout.  With all of our local rivers and streams bank full and the color of coffee with cream, we took the option of a long drive to a stream we knew would provide the antidote.

We arrived around 7:00pm the first evening, and made the most of the 2 hours of light we had to work with.  Within 10 minutes of getting there, Doug and Austin were in the river, with Doug demonstrating the competition nymphing skills he learned recently (photo above).   It wasn't long before Doug was into a brown and letting Austin know it, a la Hank Patterson.  Meanwhile, I quietly enjoyed the show from across the river - two like-minded fly fishermen and good friends sharing a rod, catching trout and loving every minute of it. 

The next day the boys were on the water by 9:00am and off to the races again, this time each with their own rod, while we went off in search of breakfast.  The day was beautiful, warm and bright, but the river was a cool 58 degrees and slightly off-color from recent rains.   Perfect. 
 

We fished hard that day beneath white cotton clouds that slid through the bright blue sky above.  It got fairly hot, but since the trout were active and the water cool, we barely noticed.....the younger folks less so than me.  And we caught fish, lots of them.   Mostly browns with a few rainbows mixed in, all on nymphs.    Austin and Doug used a variety of Doug's bead head Quill Nymphs and bead head Walt's Worms, while I used two patterns all day - #16 brown Serendipity's and #12 Walt's Worms. Here's one of Doug's Quill nymphs.

We managed to get Doug and Austin off the stream an hour later than planned, but their smiles wiped out any frustration we may have had while anticipating the drive home.  We had a great time and it was a pleasure meeting, laughing and fishing with Austin.

Now that I think about it, it would have been insane not to have taken this road trip.  Thanks DM!