Ben and I have been so impressed on our previous trips with Landon on the Dream Stream that we now have a standing spring and fall trip. Our spring trip this year happened at the end of March and it was an absolute blast.I'm not sure what else to say about these trips that I haven't already said. I've learned so much on the three trips we've done with Landon. It is an absolutely amazing feeling when you start picking out the "99 percenters" (fish that 99% of people don't see) by catching a hint of white or just something barely unnatural in the water and then relaxing your focus to get an idea of the outline of a fish.
I think the other thing that I've noticed is that Landon seems to remember exactly where we left off on our last trip and picks up right where we left off. He has a really good ability to remember where his clients are in different areas and jump right in where needed on each trip.Maybe the last thing to mention is that I think it would be very hard to find someone that knows this stretch of river better. On every trip Landon has had a game plan before leaving the parking lot. These game plans take into account a lot of things such as what the weather was like the evening before, what the current and foretasted weather conditions are, how many cars are in the parking lot, where larger groups of anglers are headed, what fish (by name I think) have been seen and where, etc, etc.....
I recently picked up "101 Trout Tips", Landon's latest book, and it's interesting to read about some of the things I've learned from these trips on formulating a game plan. It really helps to learn a lesson on stream and then to reinforce that lesson with text or vice versa. I think the more times you see, hear, or read something the more you understand about what the teacher is trying to get across. This really helps you to not just think you've learned something but to actually be able to apply what you learned in new situations. That, in my mind, is when you truly understand something.
On this particular trip we had a heavy does of fog in the morning. Landon had us walk downstream in order to get in position to intercept any lake fish that were using the fog as cover to move upstream. He knew that if the fog burned off into a bluebird day (which is exactly what happened) that the fish would settle in to the deeper runs. It was amazing to see this develop as the morning went on. As soon as the sun started to burn off the fog (as seen in the pictures) our flies started getting hammered! We were positioned in a deep bend run and it seemed like the fish knew they were going to settle in and were in a hurry to eat before the sun burned off all of their cover. This plan netted us the biggest fish of the day. Very cool.
