The Cast (In order of appearance)

I'm doing some retro-active blogging to get up to present day, so a little more background.

First, the characters in this tale:

Jay - I'm your humble host. I'm a lifelong Minnesotan and some of my earliest memories relate to fishing because I grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River. I remember with great fondness trolling plugs on the wingdams of the river and wearing those ungodly big orange horse collar life vests.

For some reason, I developed an interest in fly fishing at the age of about 11 which makes me a bit of a black sheep because if my family had a motto, it would likely be something like "If you can't back-troll for it, it's not a fish." I mean, that'd be in Latin, obviously, but that's what it would translate to.

Now I prefer to fly fish whenever possible. I fish trout, steelhead, and a highlight of my sporting life has been catching an Atlantic Salmon on the River Spey in Scotland. But I get sick of trout fishing when it gets really hot and weedy in the summer, so I switch to largemouth and smallmouth bass, fishing with both the fly and gear.

Jeff - Apologies, Jeff, for writing your bio for you. Jeff grew up just north of the Twin Cities and he's a Minnesota Finnlander to the core. Jeff is an avid angler mostly fly angler for trout, but also he likes to fish gear for muskies and pike. He's also a Nordic skier, cyclist (road and mountain), so basically he's in annoyingly good shape. He's also a good wildlife photographer and he's made several trips to photograph Sandhill Cranes during their migration through the Platte River. I'll see if I can get him to post some pics.

One final note, some think Jeff bears a striking resemblance to the late John Denver in some photos. I'll post a comparison later.

Next up: We get started on the drift boat.