7/10/2019 Fly fishing for the first time again and lakeside IT support

It’s been a while since I’ve fly fished. About three years. Before that I was rocking a 30 year streak of not fly fishing. I’d always wanted to try fly fishing but just never got around to it. That is until July 2016 when my employer had a controller meeting in Truckee just outside Lake Tahoe. My buddy Stan arranged for Orvis endorsed fly fishing guide Jay Clark to take him, my dad and I trout fishing in the Truckee River. That day was magical, each of us caught fish and for dad and I it was our first time to both fly fish and catch fish on a fly rod. One day, one trip, two fish. It wasn’t much, but it was just magical enough for me to go back to Texas and buy a fly fishing kit from Academy. It was a Martin ready to fish kit and I tried it out behind my apartment in Lewisville to no avail. Frustrated, I returned it tabling the matter for a while.

One day recently while fishing at Tippah Lake I watched a bream fisherman fly fishing from his bass boat. He had old school rods and a straw hat and he just looked cool. Fast forward a day or two later and Billy Ray pulls me aside. “I got something else for you, fly fishing. I’ve started feeding my bream and they’re fattening up and I want to start fly fishing.”

I’m not a hard sell. Billy and I decided on getting cheap pre-rigged kits at first before we decided if we liked it enough to invest in something a little more sexy. We settled on the 29.99 Martin kit, an 8 ft 3 piece 5/6 weight rod and a manual fly reel.

My laptop used to work well enough that I could take it in the woods and get work done from anywhere. At some point (likely after being left out in the rain for 24 hours while lost, or maybe after being dropped 15 feet from a hanging tree stand) it stopped working. Since I work remotely, I am my own on-site IT support. I called HP and scheduled a time slot repair and was told someone would call me the next day (today). I didn’t know when they would call and heard they would really meet me anywhere (thanks to my company’s quality machines and good warranties) so I proceeded to Lake Monroe with my broken laptop and two brand new fly rods. Sure enough the tech calls me on my way to the lake and says he’s two hours from oxford. I said well so am I. “No big deal, I’ll come to you” he replied. After hitting down the name of the lake I was fishing, he said he’d be there in a few hours and would call me when he was close.

5 hour energy and e-cig? Check.

Sure enough the coolest guy you could meet drove out to Lake Monroe, fully disassembled my laptop and replaced the motherboard.

I fished for almost an hour and a half without a fish before he arrived. My casting was clumsy and loud and I frequently got my fly (a black wooly booger that was included with the rod) tangled or wrapped around trees. But interestingly enough, I was getting the fly about where I was trying to throw it and occasionally feeling definitive fish strikes. Finally, after about two hours, I felt a gentle strike followed by an unnecessarily vigorous hook strike that resulted in me jerking a fish out of the water and all the way over the kayak. I managed to land the smallest bluegill I’ve seen in recent memory and I was on top of the world. I had just caught a fish fly-fishing, by myself.

After texting 10 or so people who would care but absolutely not be impressed, I fished long enough to catch one more juvenile bluegill. It was a great day on the water and allegedly my computer will work soon.