I sat laughing to myself trying to figure out how fly fishing became an integral of my life. Like a hyper active kid who is all over the place, I had trouble focusing on one particular event. I started making notes I realized that I had all sorts of topics and memories that are essay worthy. I abbreviated those memories into the following Top Ten list.

CB’s Top Ten – Things I Never Dreamed I’d Do, Say, or Hear Fly Fishing

10. Rescue an Orvis Poster Child from drowning in a rapidly rising tailwater – save his life and at the same time offend him with a live well full of nice trout.
9. Watch a drunk, delusional, fly shop owner on the Bighorn, persuade trout to eat his Ray Charles, “Eat it, you beep, bleep, beep, bleep!”
8. Hear a grown man carry a 30 lb King up the banks of the Muskegon singing Monty Python’s, “We’re men, we’re men in tights.” 7. “It looks like a banana,” – a good ole boy’s comment on the first drift boat I floated on the Cumberland.
6. Witness a grown man fall down on a gravel bar in November, then turn around a few drifts later to find him butt naked, freezing, rinsing his underwear in the river.
5. After watching them look at the boat, then the water, then the boat, then the water for a half hour, confused on how to launch it – tell 3 Amish fellows, “Try backing the boat into the water.”
4. Have a well known local guide beg me for a hot pattern so his clients could catch some fish – tungsten bead pheasant tail emergers.
3. “Hey Brett, is that a Clouser or an ear ring?”
3. “I think you ran over a planer board back there…. it looked like a Styrofoam cup.”
2. See Chad’s black lab, Madison Doesn’t Runoff, vomit his wife’s thong streamside.
1. And, after a cold, rainy morning in a float tube, ‘I can’t find it, I’m all turtled up!’ For more thoughts, mindless ramblings, and photos please visit me at Woods and Water, link to – http://home.fuse.net/cbruce