Casting For Miss Carol

Miss Carol began her fly-fishing life late last season at Blue River. She started off like gang busters capturing trout on her first three trips. However, Carol was drifting all three times having to make quite short up and down casts. There came a point I wanted to put her on the long cast and that's when things kind of got messy. You see, I appointed myself as her casting instructor. Sweethearts shouldn't try and instruct anything to each other and when it came to me teaching Miss Carol the long cast it was evident there was an insurmountable wall between the two of us.

So, I decided to contact Steve Hollensed of Tom Beane, Texas and see if Steve would help me out and Steve said "Absolutely"! Steve is a certified flycasting instructor and Orvis Endorsed Fishing Guide. He owns and operates flywaterangling.com and does a lot of guiding on Lake Texoma and Lake Ray Roberts. Steve also guides for trout.



Steve worked with Miss Carol about forty-five minutes and it was amazing how much he helped her in that short time. It was truly a remarkable job Steve done. Now Steve doesn't know it but not only was he giving Miss Carol a much needed casting lesson he was also probably saving my life. You see, me serving as a casting instructor to Miss Carol gave her more than probable cause to slit my throat on more than one occasion.

So, if any of you guys have a sweetheart that's thinking about taking up fly-fishing then do yourself a favor and hire a casting instructor for your sweetie.

Carol and I got to Blue earlier than Steve and while we was waiting his arrival we traveled down to 17 and lo and behold there stood Donn Riss in the water with a contingency of his family. All of them was fly-fishing so we jumped out with our camera to get some pics. As I approached the water with my camera Donn pointed and said, "There he is." In the water in front of Donn was a big trout...about four pounds or so. Donn then said, "I've had him on once but he took off and snapped that 6X." I said, "Well, get em on again, because I need a picture." With his next cast Donn hooked up with the bow again and I wanted a picture of the bow in hand but the best I could do was to get the swirl. Donn communicated with the bow for a couple of minutes but then the fly pulled smooth out of the trout's mouth. Donn just laughed about it.

Donn casting a SWAPF which I believe means Single Wing All Purpose Fly. Evidently, it works quite well.

We left Donn and his family to 17 and went back upstream. The river was clear as a bell today and still quite low. Carol and I drove back to the parking lot and while we were waiting for Steve I went to the crossing and got on the upstream rock on the east side and made a couple of drifts but didn't get a single bite. While I was standing there I saw a familiar red pickup and it was Harold Beck from Gainesville. Harold hollered, "Quite a crowd, huh?" "Lots of folks", I replied. Harold said he didn't know whether to fish or just go back home.

Before leaving the rock I picked up some trash some bozo had left at the river's edge. There was a can, a couple of plastic spinner bait packages, cigarette butt, and big mess of discarded line. I just don't get some people.

I switched flies and waded out on Chuck's Ledge and ended up battling three small bows before Carol and I left to see if Steve arrived. While standing on Chuck's Ledge I saw a fly-fisher on the sandbar take a very nice bow and that fly-fisher turned out to be the son of Ralph James. And Ralph James showed up while Miss Carol was getting her instruction from Steve.

All in all it was a great afternoon on Blue and we got to see some of our dearest buddies on the river Blue. You can't beat that.