One Fine Day...Almost

Near my prairie home is a small store and each morning I travel there to get a morning cup of hot chocolate. Most mornings there is a certain lady working there and over the many cups of hot chocolate she and I developed a daily conversation and friendship. It was through the conversations that I learned that Karen loves to fish and the more hot chocolate I drank the more I learned and eventually there was one fact that came to bear. You see...Karen has never trout fished and never heard of Blue River.

Well now, no respected Blue River fan or fly-fisher for that fact could let this little problem go unresolved so Karen and I made a date to explore Lady Blue and today we did just that.



Now, I knew going into this that Karen didn't fly-fish and that was okay with me because in my master-plan I would have her fly-fishing before our day was through and it would be one fine day. However, nature had other plans and my plans for one fine day included the word almost.

Karen and I thought we were getting a really early start arriving at the parking lot of the south wilderness about ten minutes after seven. But when we roll in and hitched the ponies we found four other adventurers had beat us there.

Fishing for the first hour was slow for us and only produced one nice fat Kentucky bass. We realized we were fishing behind the other anglers because we could see them making their way upstream from pool to pool.

At our third pool I put Karen on a certain stretch of water but within two minutes she was looking upstream. She asked me if she could go upstream and I told her fine as long as she was careful. A minute after Karen left I landed the nicest bow I've battled so far this season - a beautifully colored two and half pound warrior. It was a terrific fight.

The skies had darkened and become threatening and that's when the thunder started to roll. Shortly thereafter the lightning started to flash and streak so I went to find Karen. I found her a short way upstream and she was excited telling me "there here!" "Who's here?", I asked. Karen promptly told me she had found a honey hole just tossing a small trout back and losing a sixteen incher at the bank. I took position behind Karen to watch her fish and on her next cast I got to see a bow attack her offering with extreme malicious intent. Then that bow came out of the water and did her version of River Dance. It was a beautiful sight to watch. And, let me say this about Karen...she knows how to fight a fish. Karen down and dirtied that bow into submission.

It was about that time the lightning got worse and I shared with Karen my concerns but she wanted to make just a few more casts. Turns out we would wait about fifteen minutes too long and that was just enough time for the rains to arrive.

We were two miles upstream and had to walk back in a drenching rain.


We finally made it to the prairie schooner and decided to try and wait the rain out while enjoying a beer with one another but the rain couldn't make up it's mind. Finally, we decided to go to Scotty's and order a burger to go and have lunch on Blue. After lunch there was a lull in the rain so we tried to fish Glory Hole but five minutes into it the rain came again and it was heavier.

Needless to say I didn't get an opportunity to make Karen a fly-fisher today. But she enjoyed her outing so much, as I did, we're going a-fishin' again and when we do, fly-fishing class will be in session.