This year's Sowbug was a lot different for me than 2 years ago. First, I had more going on at the event with a half day of tying and a half day of helping a buddy with his vendor booth. Second, I was showing some guys that came down from our local club around and spending some time with them. Finally, having folks staying all over the place makes it tough to connect outside the event, though I know that many of you shared meals at Western Sizzlin, I had prior plans and regretfully had to miss those.
Wasn't in the door 30 seconds before running into Denny. Got to have some good basketball talk over the weekend. Go zags! Denny then intoduces me to Nick who proceeds to dazzle me with his new found mastery of redneck culture. The time of your life, I'm sure. Git ur done, Nick. Didn't take long before seeing DonO, Dr. Zieger, Murph, Larry Carli, Larry Johnson and Jack Lehman. Took another lap and stopped to visit with Romeros before running into Tony who seemed to be on the go the whole weekend. That's a lot of fun to pack into a week, Tony. Kevin, it was so cool of you to bring to bring Shelby along. I know she had a lot of fun getting to be the honorary granddaughter this year and did a lot to upgrade your image:). Thanks for the emergency save on the rubber legs. On Friday, I finally got to catch up with my roomie, Jimmy D.. I mean, I saw him sleeping there last night, but first time to talk. We finally got to spend some valuable time together on Friday night at the tiers dinner. Ironically we spent the majority of the evening talking about golf. Same cloth, I tell you. Friday was the day to catch up with the rest of the gang. Bruce and Brandon gave up their afternoon slots so Charlie and I could have a place to tie. Another good kid there is Brandon. Had a good afternoon tying next to Charlie who opened up a couple of his fly boxes and told observers that we would tie them anything in the box. You can tell a lot about a person by how kids take to them. Kids love Charlie. Finally caught with Joe Fusco even though he lives a hour from me. We gotta hit some ponds, man. Come to our meeting sometime. At dinner Friday it occured to me that I hadn't seen Tom yet. No sooner were the words out of my mouth when I ran into him and then Fish and Buck. I then saw Al, Buck and their buddy on the water Saturday afternoon where Al did not disappoint with his choice of jokes. Rodney, thanks for photos, the fish and the laughs. i know that's a long way to roll, but I hope it was worth it. What a terrific bunch of folks along with the others I ran into over the weekend. I figured between VFB, FFF folks and others from flyfishingarkansas.com board, I went away knowing 50-60 people from the weekend. I already had 2 e-mail requests since I got home for Free State Fly Fishers t-shirts from Oklahoma and Texas. Learned a little, laughed a lot and am richer for knowing you folks. See you there next year. -Jayhawk Jeff piscator non solum piscatur __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
