Brian Wise

It is really amazing how young kids can be and still do well fly fishing. In late 2006 I was practicing for the Best of the West distance casting competition and one day he came out and wanted to cast....and did well. He caught his first trout on the fly the spring of 2007 and then caught a PIG of a rainbow at Dry Run last year. They are sponges and hang on your every word....until they lose interest. Another reason Dry Run is so good is the playground in Quarry Park which is really close to the lower part of the stream--run over there when they get bored with fishing. Such a cool place. Brian

So my eldest is getting ready to turn 6 in April. What does he want for his birthday...a fly rod. So I should be getting the new Ross Journey rod in the mail this week sometime...coupled with a Flystart reel. The rod is really cool, a 7 1/2' 4 wt with a smaller grip for the kids, they come in pink or blue (which I could do without because that just means he'll grow out of it that much quicker but kind of cool)and it's a 4 piece. Ross Journey Rod This is the first real birthday that we at the Wise household have been through with schoolmates involved. A lot of kids want to do a bowling birthday party....Chuck-e-Cheese....or the regular old stay at home birthday---not my kid, he chose Dry Run Creek. Brian

Hey lunkin, Possible wading on the North Fork of the White (Missouri side) is at Patrick Bridge access on H Hwy, Blair Bridge access off of CR 354 (also off of H Hwy) and Kelly Ford off of a few county roads. I would recommend fishing the Patrick Bridge access and hike up the west side of the river from the campground to the islands. For food you can come on into Gainesville and have Pizza or awesome burgers at the Antler. Good Luck! Brian

I am a huge fan of both the CF and SA System X boxes. If it were me and I worked at BP and didn't want to jump straight into a CF I would try one of the new System X boxes. If you do get into CF don't buy the same color....I'm an idiot and got 2 black size m boxes one day...one for wet flies one for nymphs---I now have finger nail polish on them to tell them apart. Why those things are so expensive and you can't see into them is crazy to me. Brian

Slacker Psycho it is. Brian

Hey guys, sorry so late. Again, fishing was great! I don't want to sound like a broken record but floated from ROLF to Blair all 3 days (3 different groups of people) and all saw very good fishing including a couple of guys that had never fly fished. Hands down the Psycho Prince is tearing them up this Spring. But the suprise for all 3 of these days was a great DRY fly bite in the afternoon. BWO's and Caddis were coming off but it was the BWO that they were rising for. Best dry fly of the 3 days was a #14 Parachute Adams. A dry fly caught rainbow A prettier rainbow. We had fun.... 8) Brian

Welcome Joe.....dig your wine man! Brian

The river is fishing great guys. Floated from ROLF to Blair Friday (6th.) I could do a riffle-by-riffle breakdown but it would read something like "Riffle "A" fished great, moved to riffle "B" and it fished great too....." and so on and so on. Every stop produced fish and drifting between the riffles produced fish. Best producing fly was without a doubt a Psycho Prince--hands down. It turns out the guys had so much fun on that float they wanted to do the same float the next day instead of seeing different water. We decided to target bigger fish though which meant targeting the tail-outs that much harder..probably averaged 14" fish with great numbers again! No huge fish but a couple of 16" rainbows 17" rainbow and a 16" brown. Best fly was a toss up between the Rubber-Legs and a Psycho Prince. Brian

NIIIIIIIIIICE!!!! Way to go man! Brian

Man, don't leave us hanging....we gotta see this photo! A 28" fish is insane! Brian

NIIIIIIICE! The Falls aren't my favorite place to fish for sure but we catch big fish there just about as often as anywhere....on the right water. The river HAS been fishing really, really well. Brian

I'll second that. The last GPX I had lasted almost 2 years for me.....and that is a lot of water time. I would check with SA before buying another line. I am now torn between SA GPX and RIO Gold....have been fishing the RIO for a while now and really, really like it though. Brian

Hey Forsythian, sorry man, just saw that pm. The Hammond that is for sale isn't the Hammond you may know on the North Fork of the White. It is on the Little North Fork on the western part of Ozark County....and yes, it tends to flood in that general area. It has been a while since I have been by there but I did hear the owners were remodeling it. Cool area. Brian

Pink is a mans color! They were Thingamabobbers. It was my first time really using them and I was impressed. Brian

DEEEEEEP

Before starting a crazy month of guiding coming up in March I had the opportunity to fish with a buddy. Matt Tucker came down from St. Louis after I sent him several emails about the incredibly nice water that we have now. It had also been a while since either one of us really had the opportunity to shoot some on-stream photos besides regular fish photos. We started the day by putting the drift boat in at the dirt (read MUD) "ramp" at Kelly Ford which is always a fun experience in itself. But as soon as the boat hit the water it started snowing...big snowflakes. Turns out that was probably the warmest part of the day as the wind really blew later in the afternoon and it was a "too the bone" kind of wind. Water levels were around 740 cfs. We rowed up to Lamb and nothing happening so we drifted through to Kelly--made 3 drifts at Kelly and landed as many fish. We hit another stack of fish below McKee Bridge and caught several, several fish in one spot. Ok, so pretty much every stop and pretty much all riffles produced fish the rest of the day so lets get on to the photos. Even caught a nice......sucker.....yeah, that is a look of pure excitement on my face. Had a great time. And for a little more info on the river, it does look like the really sexy water we have now will be holding on for a little while. The fall-out is really slow and with some rain coming later this week hopefully it will hold on that much longer. Don't be shy about fishing 700cfs and under, it can be some of the best water levels to fish the river. It doesn't make wading an already sketchy wading river any easier so watch your step and remember....most of the time you won't have to make a very long cast to catch these fish at higher levels so wading out real far and casting into the SUPER fast water really isn't necessary (you wouldn't stand in it so why would a fish hang out in it for very long) hit the seam. Brian

I use a nail knot straight from the leader to the fly line. I messed with the loop-to-loop stuff for a little while but found it to be a little "too much" ...just didn't like the way it did anything compared to a straight nail knot. I too have the knot tying too called the Tie Fast and I kid you not I can tie a nail knot with that thing in under 10 seconds. So actually when you get used to the Tie Fast you can usually get a nail knot tied in less time than it would take for you to string a loop-to-loop. But it does take practice. Brian

hahahaha, just noticed the "name" of the boat. That used to say Discovery 169 righ? Too funny. Brian

Nice Fish! What kind of boat is that Chief? Brian

'Then I'll keep my "Told you so" to myself. About AEG, The Drake bought the Fly Fishing Film Tour after what was left of the "main guys" at AEG resigned. The cool guys were already gone if you ask me. Brian

If I'm not mistaken we had this conversation didn't we Chance? Waist pack or nothing for me, nothing in front of you but spin that thing around and you have everything you need. Question is...what are you going to do with that avatar now that AEG is on the fritz? Brian

I am totally confused about what is happening on this thread so I'll just answer your question Russ I have the "Original" Gorillapods Click Here I see now that have one for some pretty heavy stuff. Brian

I am guiding Sunday. My guys called to see if we could put the trip off a day because it "might" be a touch chilly. Brian

Thanks for the kind words guys, again, it was a ton of fun. Chance, if you get the chance do it man. We didn't "over-plan" this trip because we wanted to keep it as spontaneous as possible...actually the only thing we planned was the route and food--that's about it. Looking back it kind of bit us because we missed a lot of footage but was probably more fun this way which was what the whole trip was about anyway. A little bit of planning and a GPS and it can be done. Terry, The video camera is a JVC Everio HD and the video of me fishing below the dam at Capps Creek in the snow was shot with my point and shoot (Olympus Stylis 850 SW), Tucker will have to give you the model number on the video camera. The video was edited with Cyberlink's Powerdirector, which is an awesome program and very easy to use but adapts well to some fairly technical stuff...and pretty durn cheap for what it does. Brian

Ness, the only metal on it is the screw for the boot that screws into the camera. Mine has seen a lot of water. The only thing that I have noticed is over time the legs will start to loosen up a little, but I have used mine a LOT. Kyle, I think I am going to be on the White that weekend. Fishing directly below the dam opens that weekend and I am going pig hunting....you wanna go with? Brian