Tailwater Tribe

Taco Bag in Evening Shade   Original Cast of "Evening Shade"   Remember the TV sitcom “Evening Shade”?   I don’t really, other than Burt Reynolds was one of the stars.   I believe he was a high school football coach and Marilu Henner was his wife.   I also believe the show was set in a fictional town in Arkansas.   A few years ago as I traveled from Heber Springs to Mammoth Springs after the Little Red River had been blown out by an epic rainstorm, I passed through Evening Shade and thought: “what a coincidence.”   After doing a little research, I know now Evening Shade, Arkansas was the location for the show.   Since then, I have passed through Evening Shade many times chasing water; attempting to find wadable trout water after the USACE performed their daily buzz-kill: elevating the water I was fishing from docile to treacherous.   Each time I passed through, I thought about a TV series I never watched, but other than a passing thought, move

Randy Berndt's Logo                 God has blessed me in so many ways.   My beautiful wife, Laurie, allows me to fly-fish all over the country.   Sometimes she accompanies me.  But more often than not, due to a demanding work schedule, she is unable to go.   I want to begin this post by thanking her for loving me enough to let me roam and scratch my itch whenever possible.                   My latest trip was a year removed from initial planning and originally was to be an extension of a two-week jaunt out west last summer with two of my closest friends, Randy and Jean Carr from Louisiana.   We fished various trout rivers in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana and were scheduled to swing over to the UP (Upper Peninsula), or “upstate” Michigan to fish with another dear friend, Randy Berndt.   Randy is a fly-fishing outfitter, guide and owner of the UP Fly Angler in Trout Creek, Michigan.   If you keep up with my blog, you are aware that Randy (Berndt) and I finished

 Sweet new net with a sweet fat rainbow I have not created a new post since December, so much to my disbelief, this is officially my first post of 2014.  Drunken Prayer "Into the Missionfield" Really, in the fly-fishing realm of reality, not much has happened.  I've made two trips north over the past six months: one during Spring break, and the other a couple of weeks ago.  I did pretty well on both of those romps, taking a good number of trout on the Spring, White, and Norfork Rivers.  Each time I go fishing, I take my old friend the GoPro with me and alternate between vids and pics as I attempt to capture the action.  This has caused a backlog on my SD card of footage dating back to last Summer's epic adventure out west.  I am winding up the final couple weeks of summer school teaching at the local college here and am currently (of course) planning new trips for July and August.  It is time to clean my SD card and make room for additional great footag