The "Dragon Slayer"

Great race report, from a great guy. 

The best thing about sport is setting a goal and making it happen--even if it seems impossible.   I can't imagine anything more ridiculous ambitious then 320 miles on gravel roads.  That's a major achievement.

When life gives you lemons...go trout fishing

After a particularly hectic couple weeks, I was looking forward to a weekend on the river.  In fact, weather permitting, I had even planned on a multi-day fly fishing extravaganza.  Weather did not permit.  Nor did practically anything else for that matter.

Early in the week the forecast called for heavy storms Sunday, so the fly fishing extravaganza was quickly downgraded to a one day excursion on the niangua-- the red headed step-child of a "fishing extravaganza."

Then, to top off this turd sandwich, my car decided to break down 30 minutes before I planned on hitting the road.  Normally I think I would have bailed on the trip and dismissed it as bad luck.  For whatever reason though, I was determined to get in some river time....so, thanks to the generosity of others, I was able to burrow a car to get out of town.  Unfortunately, I didn't make it to my destination until 2am due to the logistics of locating a car.

The fishing was tough---make that VERY tough.  I even tried to pretend I knew what I was doing by looking around for bugs. I found this golden stonefly that was about a size 14 under a rock (as well as a some fresh water scuds and some other small nymphs). 

I tried matching some flies to these bugs but nothing seemed to work that well.  In all, I landed 5 trout, all on either rubber legs or streamers.

The wind gusted all morning just hard enough to make casting nearly impossible.  Nonetheless, it was still nice to get on the river.  Though it would have been about 200% more relaxing if I wasn't working on 4 hours of sleep and I didn't have to immediately head back to return the loaner car.  Se la vie.