Tigers and Ice --->Off

Its 6:00 am. Bags are half way packed, gear is spread out on the floor, in the corner sits a fly in the vise that is only moderately started, Red Bull half way down and I can't find my 3wt reel…$&#$%!!!! Ohhh, there it is sitting right in front of me, staring at me during my entire whirling dervish act. Looking around the front room I thought, how in five minutes could I create such a disaster? After cleaning up my freak-out and re- packing all my things I turned on the computer and sat down to finish some needed Midges. I observed a few words on the screen and thought…. Shit…. What to do now… Right at that second my phone rang, it was MFRW (Chris B), and he had seen the same letters and read the same sentence. That's all it took, change of plans. Don't need that 3wt anymore today or the flies that I had to finish…. This always happens. Perhaps I should wise up and do some reverse sociology and start tying flies that I don't want to use because I never end up using the flies that I think I might "need" anyway. It's an ongoing joke that life likes to play on me… ha ...ha…ha.

About the same time the phone rang Nick and Matt were pulling in the driveway. I explained the new intelligence that had just come in over the wire. After two-point-nine seconds of dialogue we changed course and headed in the opposite direction in search of open water.

Arriving after sun-up the water looked inviting. The weather was already heating up for winter standards, the wind was calm and nobody was around. Perfect. A quick breakdown of the day's arsenal was talked about. The decision was made to go with a fast sinking tip. We all had variable lengths in leader and penciled in our starting colors. Nick had black, Matt took green and I had on white. Walking down from the car was the first "point", Nick had the gravel, Matt had the "block" and I took the… nothing really, just a piece of shoreline. Matt was on right away, and then again. Before we had the chance to figure out what was going on he was releasing another Cutthroat. Shit…. I mean, good job Matt ; ) Nick and I scrambled to our boxes of flies. I didn't really have anything green, dam it; I should have been tying Stillwater stuff. I found something that might work. By this time Matt had at least a half dozen fish and who knows how many more hits, and saying something like "Oh, oh, ooh, yep there's another one". Shit… I mean sick Matt ; ) Casting out finally... got a tug after a few casts, but nothing like I had expected. So I reeled in and attached a shiny new 9' leader, need to go longer I guess? Well that worked, finally. Nick had gotten into some Tigers, Matt had a pod of Cutts and I had some dinky planter Rainbows with no fins. I decided to move. We walked along the shore picking off fish as we made our way to the backside. On the back bay we ran into a pod of Rainbows, manly planters but if you could get below them there were some healthy holdover's, with fins… but no sign of Tigers, yet. After fishing the backstretch we found a few areas that held some monsters. A few follows were real heart breakers, following it all the way to your toes. Some how you'd find yourself trying to coax them into easting your fly. The first follow gets the heart pumping. Then the next few foolow you say something like "come on, come ON" then the "oh, oh, oh, its right there" like they don't already see it - there following it, duh. One time I caught myself saying "please", luckily nobody heard. We all got into a few nice Rainbows and Nick put on his tester and slayed it.

As we made our way around Matt spotted a game warden. He scrambled to find his license just incase we were asked. For the next hour or so the warden was seen checking everyone's license. Finally, I thought this might be the first time in my life that I have been checked. Well, unfortunately we were the only group that wasn't approached…ironically we were the only fly guys… go figure?

Last spot before we headed back produced my only Tiger. He hit it less than 5 feet from the shore but took off like a bat out of hell. I was stoked, mission accomplished. Need more Stillwater,???