8/14 Alan and Jeff

By Chad Pettrone
15 August, 2013
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A couple of nice guys that truly deserved a great day out on the river, and I think we made it happen. Having little to no experience with a fly rod, the larger sized fish of Waterdale Ranch provides a great challenge to any fisherman, let alone a rookie. Jeff took to it with ease…at least he made his first catch look easy. He hooked, fought, and landed his first fish…not many people do that….actually, nobody does that. Who is this guy? After he hooked and landed his second fish on a size 22 hook, I had to tell him that I was glad that he was new to this, because if he knew how difficult it was he would have never landed those two fish.

Alan wasn’t born naturally good at everything like Jeff, so he had to actually learn how to catch the fish before he landed one….and let me tell you, it was not pretty : ) Alan hooked this fish with his reel up-side-down and his back turned to the fish. The fish took off in a hurry, peeled out line, then came back at Alan, creating a heap of clack line. Alan quickly started reeling in, but he was actually reeling out and at this point in time, a big birds nest built up in the reel and the fish was jumping in the air on loose line. I gave a quick on-the-fly lesson on how to strip in line (pun intended) and Alan managed to catch his first fish of the day without ever using his reel. It was very entertaining, exciting, and memorable fish catching experience.

There were many more moments throughout the day that I hope are shared with friends and family along with a delicious Anheuser-Bush beverage.