Beauty of an afternoon

The best public trophy trout water in Western North Carolina is not a secret location, by any means.  That is evidenced by the two fishermen below my Ohioan brother-in-law, above (and sebenty-gabillion upstream of us that I didn't have the heart to photograph - HEY!  I broke one of my chief rules by taking my camera gear on the river in the first place!).  He, the Ohioan, is spoiled by the wide open, steelhead-filled tributaries of Lake Erie and has never experienced Southern trout fishing like he did yesterday.

In the pic above, he's hooked into his first fish of the day.  That fish turned him on to Southern flyfishing once and for all.  Here's a couple more shots of him fighting that fish:

Above he's thinking, "This isn't so hard."

Below, his story is changing somewhat. The look on his face was somethin' akin to disbelief mixed with total exhilaration with a wee bit of "I think I just lost bladder control" thrown in for effect.

 And in this one, it's all over but the cryin'

 That would be right after the dreaded "bink!" sound and only a few seconds after the fisherman downstream exclaimed "He's HUGE!!!" as the fish rocketed past his legs (evidenced by the now-slack line trailing off in the distance).

In the pic below, it's an hour or so later and he's hooked into a 14-16" rainbow and he is less-than-overwhelmed as you can tell by his body language.

And here he's chasing after the siblings/cousins/parents of the brown I couldn't keep off the bottom of the river fifteen minutes earlier (there's about a dozen fish piled up under that ledge sipping emerging midges at their whimsical leisure):

So now he's spoiled after chasing wild brookies and various survivors of the poachers catch-and-take guys in some of the smaller waters over the last few years and insists that I never take him trout fishing anywhere else ever again.

Fine by me.

Just don't count on pictures every time.