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A GRF Bachelor
Party
If you browse the
pages of GRF long enough, you will run into a bunch of pictures that
include Fitz and Chris. I lived with Chris when we were both in grad
school, and Fitz lived nearby. Since Chris and I were students,
there was always plenty of time to fish, and Fitz was in outside
sales, so he could pretty much go all the time, too. The three of us
tromped all over Georgia for about two straight years and compiled
much of the info on these pages through trial and many, many errors.
Prior to GRF and the maturation of the internet, information on
rivers was really hard to come by. These guys accompanied me on many
adventures where we truly had no idea what was around the next bend.
Our lives have all
grown a lot more complicated since those days, and we rarely get to
fish together anymore. Now Chris is getting married, so we decided
to brave the tornado warning and impending cold front of a couple
weeks ago for a bachelor party of sorts. Maybe the three of us could
still catch some fish. Our plan was to camp on the Flint River and
fish Saturday and Sunday too if the weather was decent. Here are
some pictures from the weekend:
Fitz has become something of a chef in
his old age. He handled meals for the entire weekend. Supper Friday
consisted of salad with homemade dressing, steaks, potatoes, and
asparagus.
Hungry?
After supper, we enjoyed a few adult
beverages and told lies until late
Due to the uncertain weather forecast,
we had the river virtually to ourselves. Fitz took the stern and
Chris soon started outcatching both of us. He didn't change lures
all day.
You almost always see some cool stuff
on a river float. I believe we just missed seeing this dragonfly
change from the creature on the left to the creature on the right.
The dragonfly still wasn't able to fly at this point.
It had been a pretty slow day, but the
shoalies turned on around mid-day and we really started wearing them
out. We didn't catch any mammoth fish but we did catch 8-10 that
were two pounds or better. I'm not saying what the fish were biting
so
don't even ask. Needless to say, we practiced catch and release.
Barbecued chicken breast sandwiches
with Fitz's homemade barbecue sauce, homemade potato salad, and cold
barley pop. If the fish hadn't been biting I'd have taken a nap
right on that rock!
I got in on the act too
And Fitz can do more than just cook.
Chris with yet another nice shoal
bass. Around 4 PM, we ran into a fellow GRFer (Webb Nall) who was
having a good day as well. Webb was kind enough to offer us a place
to stay if the weather got rough that night.
We were lucky that the rain held off
until 5:30 PM or so. We got drenched at the very end, and watched
the rains pour forth and the skies worsen. As you can tell, the
camper awning isn't holding up too well. We decided to go eat some
catfish and see if we could catch a weather report. Tornado warning
for Columbus, GA. Should we hunker down and ride the storm out or
flee to the safety of Fitz's house an hour away?
I thought you'd never ask! Pancakes,
scrambled eggs, cheese grits, bacon, sausage, and coffee served up
hot at Casa de Fitz Sunday morning. As it turns out, we probably
should have camped and fished the next day, despite it being cold
and windy. We would have in the old days. Man, were we stupid back
then.
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