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It never fails. With each passing competition and the reflection there of, it never fails to amaze me, the enormous amount of knowledge gained from each and every competition. As the amount of competitions completed stacks up over time, so goes the knowledge gained. This past weekend’s Wilsons Creek Oyster Roast was no different.
Wilsons Creek, as a one day tournament offers the competitive angler several, several challenges. For one, it is extremely beat dependent, and being a one day tournament, this fact alone is very difficult to overcome. It appears that some sections of the river get stocked with an

Well you go into a tournament thinking you have the roadmap to success, and things go completely different than planned. I had fished this same tournament before almost exactly one year ago. I take extensive notes on every tournament, so with what I had learned from the previous, I felt really good going into this one. The problem with that assumption, is that although the venue may be the same, and the time of year maybe the same, the conditions rarely are. That was definitely the case for this year’s Casting For Hope Fall Bash.
It takes many things in order to win a tournament in today’s competitive fly fishing scene, especially with so many top quality anglers. You need to have a good game plan, a lot of

What a humbling experience. Just when you think you have the game whipped, you are faced with a situation that makes you truly question your abilities. I must say that to be successful in competition fly angling, you have to have all of your ducks in a row, and be totally focused. The competition is just too good, not to be. This was the situation that I found myself in competing this past weekend (July 27th, 2019) in Cherokee, NC. My usual partner Peyton was gone doing something else on this particular weekend and I fished with one of our teammates father (who is a good angler) but one that I had never fished with before. Needless to say my heart just wasn’t into it. True to form however, I took some very valuable information away from this competition, as I usually do in every one that I compete in. I firmly believe in knowing the water and the fish contained therein is absolutely imperative to being successful in competition. Like I said before…………the competition is just too good not to.

Dates of the competition were Saturday June 22nd and Sunday June 23rd. I would say the water conditions were medium flows and just ever so slightly tinted. Air temps were in the high 80’s and the water temps would get to around 71 after lunch time. I wished I would have checked temps early in the morning but I didn’t. I really, really need to start recording more information. I checked the stocking schedule after the competition and apparently the stream was freshly stocked on that Thursday, June 20th. I think this and the water temps being high played a big factor in the behavior of the fish.
Peyton was away at a Trout Unlimited camp all that week, so my partner for

May 18, 2019 Today I fished on Spring Creek with Pat Weiss. We started around 9:00 am after he answered my hundreds of questions that I had been saving up until now. I will try to summarize the answers to some of those questions. Flashy Flies vs. Naturals In regards to fly selection and non-flashy…...