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A. Very first thing, was learning how to cast in order to land the flies, and sighter on the water lightly and at the same time. It could be surmised as a high, very short stroke, that ends with your rod pointed at a point very high above your target. I think the point is to have the leader and tippet completely straightened out when it lands on the water, as to register takes quickly.
Also not using too much power on the forward stroke, but let the rod flex and do the work for you, much like over powering a graphite shaft golf club, the club head is always lagging behind and the power is wasted.

We met at the Riverside Park in Spruce Pine NC about 8:30 am. The temperature was about 34 degrees with about 15 mph winds and cloudy. All that equal miserable fly fishing conditions. I had wader insulators, two layers of fleece, thick buff, bogin, and my heavy rain coat. I forgot my simms gloves, and could have really used a goose down jacket under the rain coat. This is about as cold as it gets out on the water with these windy conditions.
The North Toe is a big river, probably the same size of the Watauga, with lots of

Team Mentality and sharing information raises the bar for everyone, thus creating individual medals
Fish Shallow to Deep
"A" water is dictated by insect activity - When bugs are hatching, fish are going to be in the riffles, pockets, shallow water and banks. When no bugs are hatching they are going to be
where the conveyor brings them the food.
You have to think of the stream as a conveyor belt for food. If you dump in 1,000 bugs at the head of a section of water, how would those bugs be distributed down stream?

It was March 2, 2019. The plan was to meet at Wilson’s creek in Mortimer NC, to pre-fish for the upcoming Wilsons Creek Clean-Up tournament in two weeks on March 23rd. Evidently, the North Carolina game and fish commission decided to wait until March 4th to stock rather than their original plan of March 1st, so we simply decided to try another venue. I actually prefer fishing for wild trout or holdovers over stocked fish, as it makes things much more challenging, but I wanted to fish the creek as it would exist come tournament time. I have learned that pre-fishing a venue before it is stocked, is completely night and day different than when it comes tournament time and it is full of stocked fish. We did have a tournament coming up on the Watauga River in Boone, NC on March 9th, and

I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t chasing fish with a fly rod and posing in front of a camera with my most recent catch. (Insert kid photos with fish) Well, I take that back. There was a short time……during my college years, that I devoted most of my time to chasing something else and only part of the time fishing, but shortly after graduation, I landed a keeper (pardon the pun), and went right back to chasing fish.
What an amazing experience I have had over the years learning to fly fish. Although I have fly fished since a small child, and guided out west during the college years, I can remember vividly when I first decided to get serious about fly angling. I have always loved a challenge, and when I wasn’t good at something, I would work and work at it until I became good at it. It wasn’t until my wife and I decided to relocate our family and ended up landing between two of the greatest tail waters in the United States that I realized that I was not a good fly angler. It was here that I received my first real lessons in humility when it came to fly angling! I would go to

Initial conversation was about leader/tippet set up.
We want a leader that turns over a single nymph and a single dry very well. We want our tippet to be about the depth of the water for quick detection. If your tippet is too long it will take the bite much longer to be detected as it has more slack. Mason also does not like to use tippet rings as he says it gives a hinge point or a sag point in his leader. He ties his sighter