Fished W/ Leonard

[ColdWaterFshr]

Took the family down to Bransun last week for a little R & R. Ran up a huge hotel bill. Drank copious amounts of poolside beverages, suffered miserably at the SD City (Marvel cave was actually pretty cool), borrowed my uncle's boat on TR and nearly sunk it, greased up with 50 spf everyday, a little touch and go with heatsroke a few times, gawked at some silicone at the Chateau, yada yada.

But perhaps the highlight of the trip for me was an evening of fishing with Leonard Keeney of Taneycomo Nights.

The evening didnt' start out well. My buddy JW drove down from Springfield to join us, but forgot to bring any waders. So he had to run up to WalMart on the strip and buy some hippers. While he wrestled with those demons, Leonard and I strung up our 7 wts and dropped in at outlet #1 stripping cracklebacks at about 8 p.m. HUGE fish were porpoising everywhere but I was far too excited to be effective against them. Managed to pull one out before it really got dark and foggy. My roll-cast would rate a B- in the daylight, but darkness, fog, and a 4-inch long PMS fly soon had me in the D minus range. It took a while, but I found my groove. Caught a couple nice browns, the biggest about 16. JW caught one closer to 19 inches. The hits on the PMS were always when you least expected. And fishing in the dark is a whole new ballgame because you are relying totally on feel.

Leonard was great. He would calmly wade back and forth between me and JW all night giving instruction, tying on different flies. When either one of us would go a while without catching a fish, he would retrain us on the proper techniques by giving a quick demonstation, right in the spot we were standing and either catch a fish or have a good take. So it wasn't that they weren't biting.

The glow-in-the-dark rig that Leonard tied on for us was too cool. We didn't fish with it the whole night, but it did well in outlet #2. Thankfully, not much casting was required there. As I was bumbling around in the darkness, I accidentally stepped on Leonards rod and broke it. He was very gracious about it, took all the blame on himself and was even kind enough to let me bum a few swishers.

All in all, a great time. Finished at about 2 a.m. JW and I each ended up with 3 or 4 quality fish each and a couple more small ones. Not a huge numbers night, but the feeling that a big fish could happen at any moment was a feeling that was with us the whole night. Saw a fisherman wade past us at one point during the evening with what looked like a 4-5 lb walleye. One of my last casts of the night was WAY out into the strong current of 4 generators with a reticulated PMS. Had a vicious strike that about broke my arm. Thought I had Shamu on, but when I got the fish closer, it was a 12 inch bow. We got a good laugh out of that one.

Went down again on Sunday during the heat of the day while the wife and kids went shopping and pulled out a couple more. Mainly experimented with a bunch of different flies without much success.

Leonard knows his stuff. I'd love to go down there in the late fall w/ lower water conditions and try that again.

[Leonard]

Hey CWF...

It was good to meet you... yes for sure we will have to do it again in low water

That last fish was a blast...

Boy did he ever SLAM that fly....

Ive had fish hit like that many times... I have completely missed them... LOL... but thats a strike you'll remember for awhile..

here are the browns from this weekend....

LOL....

gawked at some silicone at the Chateau

WOW... thats one way to put it...

Leonard