By Stefan Osborn
This story started on an annual family camping trip to Townsend, Tennessee early in June 2003. It just so happens that the campground was on the Little Pigeon River. The last day of fishing my flyrod snapped in half. It didn’t have a warranty on it so I was out of luck. My dad thought I was ready for an upgrade to a quality flyrod. Shopping around with that in mind, Mike at Mark’s Outdoors set me up with a G-Loomis gl2 No. 5 rod with a lifetime guarantee. With a Mark’s Outdoors gift card from Christmas, and a little bit of kindness from my dad, I walked out with a great flyrod.

My cousin Johnny Dikis, an avid fisherman, had a birthday and for a gift we gave him a guided fly fishing trip to the Norfolk River in Arkansas. My Dad, Johnny and I set out on June 27, 2003 for an 8-hour drive to Charlie’s Rainbow Trout Resort. We arrived in the middle of the afternoon, so we went down to Dry Run Creek to check it out. Dry Run Creek is right next to the national fish hatchery and is a catch and release stream reserved for flyfishers under 16 years old. The rules include the use of barbless hooks and artificial lures only. There is so much food that these fish can stay in the same spot and live their life without hardly moving. You can turn over a rock and it will come to life with insect larvae-food. Within an hour we had caught four or five fish each without a guide. We thought that was good enough, so we went a mile down the road to the resort. And for the rest of the night we tied flies we thought would work. We had no idea!

The next day we got up early, ate breakfast and got ready. Clint Wilkinson, our guide, arrived at 8:00 a.m. and asked us if we were ready to catch some fish. We showed him the flies we had tied the night before. He politely smiled and said don’t worry about it, I got you covered. So we went down to the same spot we were in before and he set us up. First cast, we both had nice sized fish. If we went five casts without a fish, he would put us right on top of some. About an hour and a half and fifteen fish each later I hear “Stefan come here. You see that?”

I was looking at a monster rainbow trout in the upstream crystal clear water and was awed at the color and bulk of the fish. Clint tied a deeper fly on my leader and told me about this trout. On four separate occasions Clint had clients that hooked this fish but never landed him. Clint had me to start dead drifting my fly across the top of the fish, but he didn’t go for it. I even hit him with the fly a couple of times. Then I gave a slight twitch and wham zzzzzzzzzz drag was letting out as if it was late for a party, and I almost dropped the pole. Clint jumped to his feet and started instructing me. “Keep the pressure” “if he runs let him run” “ lift his head”. Five minutes later, my arms were getting tired and the fish was still dodging the net as if it was his job.

It ran upstream, then I managed to turn him around, and he increased speed downstream. This kept up for another three minutes then I felt him slow down a considerable amount so I lifted his head and guided him in to a large net that couldn’t hold him. Clint wrestled him back to the bank and I was just shaking at the sight of him.

I knelt down and Clint handed the fish to me, and I was shaking so much that I almost dropped him. Then Clint helped me hold him so we could actually take a picture. All of this was within the first two hours. We each caught over 30 trout that day. My dad said that it was fate that my starter flyrod broke before this trip; it would have never been able to take the stress–

Dad’s note: Priceless Memories