One of my favorite fishing friends

 Fishing is all about comradery. But unfortunately gone are the days of laughter until I almost wet myself with the dry humor of one of my favorite fishing friends. Natalie Sharp of Sharper Bites Fly Fishing. We spent a many a day guiding some of her best clients into private water in the north Georgia area. Or just fishing one of our favorite rivers The Toccoa.    She’s thrown in the towel and retired from her many years of providing quality fishing experiences and a wonderful high quality five diamond shore lunch with her special trout spread appetizer.   Age has a way of working on all of us and climbing river banks and tying  100 fly lines and untangling lines from trees and your clothing for unappreciative clients for meager wages finally got her to toss the waders out and spend time with her fat old cat in a rocking chair on her front porch.  She’ll be missed dearly.  Thanks Natalie for all the wonderful memories of days on the river.

 

My second to the youngest grandsons first trout

 My two grandsons used to spend many summers, spring breaks, Christmas holidays and just about every other holiday and several weekends each year fishing a number of creeks and mostly 

The Toccoa River in northern Georgia.  They used spinning casters and occasionally I'd let them try a fly rod though after they totally wrapped up the lines into a tangled mess I would point them back to their spinning casters.  Much of the time they'd get bored with not catching much and soon be doing more swimming and playing than fishing.  Occasionally I would take them to a trout farm and they would spend a couple hundred of my dollars in fishing in those ponds.  Kacen has been trying to get the hang of fly fishing and I took him to a large lake and he would improve his skills catching little panfish.  This summer he finally got the hang of fishing in fast moving water.  It's a whole different story and the needed technical skills differ from all other types of fishing.  After a couple of hours he finally landed a nice little brown.  His excitement and optimism peaked after he landed it.  I was just about as excited about it as he was,  years of taking time to get them out on the water paid off with his ear to ear grin holding his first trout caught with a fly rod.  Great job K-Man!!!