Quick Thoughts On The Competition

I’m home, after the banquet, the awards ceremony, shaking of hands, meeting some great people and making some new friends.

First, the bad news: Egad, I’m almost embarrassed to admit this – but yes, I placed last. Even Dil Perera (sorry Dil, I don’t mean that the way it sounds!) caught one more fish than I did. She probably was able to entice a male brown to her bait with her very pretty good looks (Have to look up that John Donne poem), whilst I was unable to entice many female brown trout to my hook.

I did have a better day today myself – getting two fish on a dry fly tied up by Ian James for me. A size 20 elk hair caddis pattern. I also lost 4 fish at the net, and missed a number of other takes.

I also came away with a great deal more fly fishing knowledge and made the acquaintance of some great anglers. Especially those on my team. Even with my poor showing, we looked at the results and because of an administrative mix up that caused some issues – if those issues were not a factor, our team may have even placed third. Teammate Arron Varga placed fourth overall, our team captain, Ernie Kalwa placed 9th, and Nik Terpselas placed 26th, but that was after the aforementioned administrative problem which as the result of a protest, “blanked” all anglers fishing that section during that period of time.

My good friend Brian Vickery, placed 18th overall. How our team ended up finally ranking, I’m not sure as the whole system seems quite confusing to me, and I can’t figure it out from the score cards I was given.

First I want to acknowledge the guys on my team; even though I did so poorly, they were all still very encouraging and laughed with me at my final ranking. And I’m looking forward to doing more fishing with all of them in the future.

Next, the great folks that all participated. Even the gold medal winner, Terence Courtoreille of Team NWT, agreed to have this picture taken with me – I thought it would be great to have the first and last placed anglers pictured together.

And yes, both the knowledge and new aquaintances! And lucky me, I have pictures of myself with all of the very awesome and good looking “ladies only” team, “The Featherweights.” And believe me guys, there ARE women fly fishers who not only enjoy fly fishing, but are also very very good at it too. I’m looking forward to spending some time on the river with some of them and learning some new things myself.

When I have time, I will publish a much larger article on the whole competition, including images of the various medal winners, and hopefully if they co-operate, some profiles on some of the anglers I really enjoyed fishing and learning with, and talking to.

But for now, I’m exhausted after attending one of the “last night” parties and being up for almost 24 hours.