Maybe you have heard about or seen the t.v show, Hillbilly Handfishin'. Its pretty lame. A few weeks ago, on a crisp fall morning, Neil must have been inspired by the show, because he caught this hog of a trout with his bare hands....

  I shit you not. This thing literally floated into Neil's lap. Now, if I were to leave the story at that, I'd have you believing that Neil is some kind of jedi angler, but as much as he would like to believe, thats just not the case.

  On that crisp fall morning, Neil and I were sitting in our boats alongside a stretch of river that we like to float on a regular basis. In 5 years, we've never seen another person floating, so it came as a shock when a big blue raft came bouncing down around the corner. We were in mid conversation, talking about the river and how maybe the fishing wasn't as good as it used to be, and where did all the hogs go etc, etc. And wouldn't you f*ckin know it, its a utah DWR electroshock fish survey team!!!

 

  They floated by, and we said hello. The guy in charge told us about the large number of fish in the river. No shit. Before we knew it, fish were floating to the surface, squashing any of our doubts about where the fish had gone. I took off downstream chasing a large incapacitated rainbow trout, a huge tiger trout to my right, when Neil casually says to me, "Ian, look..." I turn around and he's just sitting there with this honky tonk brown trout and a big grin on his face! We just laughed for a bit, thinking how ridiculous this was.

  The actual fly fishing that day was already pretty slow, but after the survey team raked the whole stretch and floated every fish to the surface, I'm pretty sure everybody lost their appetite. We didn't catch shit except for a couple little guys who probably managed to avoid the zap. It was a rad experience nonetheless, for a brief moment, like jedi anglers.