Last week I had the absolute pleasure and honor to teach my 7yo daughter how to tie her first fly (a Red San Juan Worm with Pink Thread), it took her 4 times of watching me tie one and about 10 times of watching me show her how to whip finish and she was off.  Within short order she had tied up a dozen flies that looked pretty darn good.  I am going to catch  some video of her tying for the site, because I like to brag.  The key to teaching her the whip finish was showing her how the thread will create a number “4” when it is in the proper position; once she saw that it was game on.

I was supposed to catch up with Brian Wise to work out some details of the upcoming “Trip” that we are making over Thanksgiving weekend, so we used the opportunity to meet and discuss the trip in detail while taking our kids to Dry Run Creek.  We rolled in fairly early in the morning and as I was helping Hannah into her youth waders she told me to just “leave your flies in the truck” if only I would have listened to her.  The first place we stopped, on her first cast, with her first fly she tied herself, she landed a fish.  I don’t think I could have ever been more proud of her.  Now we get to work on mending line on the water and a few other things, but she is doing great.  She even stepped up throughout the day to help net Parker’s fish as well as completely unhook her fish, take it out of the net, and release it.  Lots of fish were caught and it was a great 3hours on the water with our kids as Brian and I worked out our plan of attack for the thanksgiving day trout massacre.  As the kids were getting tired of fishing, we headed to town for lunch and Hannah and I drove back to St. Louis.  A lot of driving, but Hannah is already tying more flies and looking forward to heading back down.  It was awesome.

–Matt Tucker