Sunday, June 26, 2022

The White


Heaven ain't too far away...

When I was 12, a family friend named Stephen Konopka found out that I was interested in fly fishing and bequeathed to me a giant stack of fly fishing magazines and Orvis catalogs. In one of those magazines, was a picture of Rip Collins' world record brown trout that came out of the Little Red River in Arkansas in 1992. At over 40 pounds, it was hard for me to fathom that a brown trout could get that big and that it was possible to land on light tackle. The magazines, and the images inside of them, were a large part of why I ended up getting a fly rod outfit for my 13th birthday. The rod put me on the path that I've been on ever since. One day I knew that journey would eventually bring me to Arkansas, just like it did with anglers from around the world. Rip's giant brown literally put Arkansas on the world's radar as a fly fishing mecca for trout. Since then, the legend of the Ozarks only grew and my desire to to fish the Little Red and the White River intensified. This summer, I made my way down south, and found myself with a few days to play on a famous river. 

It lived up to the hype. 

Thursday, June 16, 2022