Henry Rifle Forums

Had a young friend drop in Tuesday just as I was about to leave for my class at Woodcraft. He had been one of our young fly tiers on on another website, competing at thirteen against seasoned adults in monthly competitions online, and winning. A good kid, an Eagle Scout, we took a liking to him early on. I can remember taking he and his mom on a kayak trip down the James River, killing it on the fly rods for smallies.... The year before he graduated.

Time has passed. He graduated from college, moved to L. A. and has a successful career in place as a photographer. He is home for a bit, doing a photo journalist thing in the area, and touching base. Tina told him we had extra kayaks, fly rods, plenty of flies tied up... "Wanna Fish while you are home? " she asked.

"I see Friday opening up." He said, grinning. ".

We loaded all the kayaks this morning, he chose a 7wt fly rod, matching reel, and a selection of flies when he arrived, and we were on the water thirty minutes later. They were calling for thunderstorms, but we had nice weather for the morning. I caught two decent bass, Tina caught a monster bigger than the puppy in the kayak with her, plus a big ol cat fish... And our guy had a great day as well.

Subway afterward, brought the subs home and went back to catching up. The alarm company tech showed up to fix the burned out alarm. It was good to see our young friend, but he had to head back to the folks to visit with them a bit more. We told him the kayaks were waiting, he promised to keep in touch.

Nice to see old friends.

Nice story and visit Jim! Hope you all can do it again in the future.☺

A picture...

The Bonefide Kayaks are VERY stable. Young Wray hasn't kayaked in a good while and has been busy with his new career, so it's been nearly a year since he had thrown a fly rod. After about an hour on the water in Tina's kayak, he was standing and making long beautiful casts across the cove... like he used to.


Here is a shot from the River Trip with Wray and his mom all those years ago, when I told him to cast to a lumbering four foot gar, he laid the fly ON the gars head and hooked it.


It was a beautiful day on the river that day... and we all enjoyed the float. I started the day with a nice smallmouth, it boded well for the trip. The camo pattern on the kayak is custom painted by Miss Tina, she usually painted all our kayaks when we first bought them, and her work was very popular on the forums... and in our kayak fishing group. She got rather creative over the years.


Miss Tina chatting with Wray's mom while drifting down current.


The train passed right over our heads, and the engineer blew the whistle to say hello. Unexpected as it was, we nearly jumped from the kayaks.


Like I said in the original post, it was a great day on the river for us all.

Fun times for sure!